Angel Saga
by Laryna6
Summary: Nelo Angelo became a devil arm after he was defeated on Mallet. Dante is determined to reclaim his brother, but Mundus left scars that won't heal that easily, especially when the second great war is on the horizon.
1. I Angel Blade: Hades

Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry.

This was an idea I tossed off a long time ago while wondering why the DMC1 opponents didn't turn into devil arms. Because Mundus didn't want to give Dante free weapons. Mundus kills Griffon himself so, as Vergil got Beowulf despite Dante doing all the work there too, Mundus would have gotten any Griffon devil arm. And Nelo, who ate'nt dead, flies off. Phantoms, I have decided, simply don't turn into devil arms any more than Hell Vanguards do.

And DMC2 was DMC2.

In any case, here we go.

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Hades

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Nelo Angelo started to glow and rise into the air. It looked like his powers were going haywire and he was about to give up his soul, but he could be powering up for another attack. Dante fired his new Lightening Bow a couple more times just in case.

The roaring sound grew louder and Dante had to shield his eyes from the light, then both light and sound stopped. He opened his eyes and got ready to receive the soul, hearing a clink.

Both his hands tightened around swords. Huh? Agni and Rudra were two swords, but they were two demons. Nelo Angelo had only used one sword. These swords didn't even match.

The one in his right hand looked a lot like Force Edge, only the metal was a deep silvery blue, the pommel was a sapphire instead of skull-like, and the crossbar was wrapped with vines, or they could be little snakes.

The other was a long katana, wait.

He knew that sword.

Yamato.

His eyes widened.

The demon that he had dubbed Nero Angelo, black angel, for lack of some other name since it hadn't spoke, had had Yamato.

Now that he thought about it, maybe that was why its powers had been like Vergil's. Dante had no idea how much of what Vergil had done on Temen ni Gru had been Yamato's power and how much his own abilities. Dante had never been able to master the displacement technique.

Something glinted in the corner of his eye.

Mostly to distract himself by gathering up the red orbs, he walked over.

This wasn't a red orb.

It was the other half of his Mother's amulet. He dropped Yamato to the ground to pick it up.

Vergil's sword, Vergil's amulet.

Dante had know that Mundus wouldn't be merciful enough to let Vergil die. He would defeat him, and by demon laws the loser had to serve the winner. Only Vergil would never willingly serve Mundus.

What had Mundus done to Vergil to turn him into that?

That explained why Nelo hadn't finished him off. Dante pulled the sword that was, unbelievably, his twin brother to his chest and hugged it.

Vergil had overcame whatever torture, whatever spells, whatever conditioning Mundus had put him through to spare Dante's life, even though he'd obviously been in pain while doing it.

His brother was still alive. For a given value of alive.

First Trish with his mother's face and now this. Dante smiled. It felt like his family was coming back to him. He also hugged Vergil's amulet, their memento of their mother, to his chest and felt it and the one around his neck grow warm and light.

He let them go and they floated together. He found Force Edge suddenly in his free hand and felt power rise inside it in answer to the amulets. Vergil had needed both amulets to gain Sparda's power.

Would this unlock the power that had killed Mundus? Would this awaken his Father?

Father, Mother and Twin, all because his brother had found the strength to spare him. "Vergil?" Dante whispered. "If you can hear me, thank you. I'll defeat Mundus for you, I promise."

Force Edge was growing, changing, glowing. A scythe, a halberd, he collapsed it back into a sword and tucked it over his shoulder, feeling its power flow throw him enough to make him trigger for a few instants.

He wanted to fight with Vergil's sword.

He needed to think up a cool name for it, something worthy. Not like 'Woozy' as he'd nicknamed Force Edge for the hell of it.

But no. He needed to master the sword of Sparda. The only power that had ever defeated Mundus. His hand tightened on the grip of Vergil's sword.

His father's sword was the one he needed to feed red orbs to hopefully unlock its powers, was the one he needed to practice on the hordes of weak demons infesting this island with in order to learn how to use it, the one he needed to figure out how to devil trigger using.

He couldn't feel the power inside it that he used to devil trigger. That wasn't good. Arkham had been able to devil trigger with it, why couldn't he? Vergil hadn't been able to either, sure he would have if he could.

If Vergil had had this sword's full power, if Dante had given him the amulet, would he have been able to kill Mundus then?

Would Dante, even with almost ten years more experience, be able to kill Mundus now?

Time was running out. Vergil was a warrior, he would understand. Mundus was the priority now. The world was counting on him.

He remembered Vergil falling into hell. Leaving him behind for their father's power, their father's home. Remembered Yamato cutting his hand, he still had the glove. The last time he and Vergil had touched, even by proxy.

Now he held his brother in his arms again, as he hadn't since they were children.

And Sparda help him but he didn't want to let him go.

He'd never known his father, only his mother's stories. He'd hated him for years, blaming him for mother's death and Vergil's loss: if he'd loved them he wouldn't have disappeared and left them for his enemies to hunt down.

His brother… he'd played with him, mourned him, chased after him whenever he appeared even though he had his own life to build.

His face but not, they'd shared their father's soul and blood but they'd been so different. Still twins despite everything, still one. It had felt like he had died when Vergil fell. Vergil had chosen certain death over life with him.

Only later had Dante realized that too few demons had followed him as he escaped. Had Vergil been his rearguard? Had Vergil sacrificed himself for Dante?

Dante wanted to believe that. Wanted to believe Vergil still cared in his own twisted way despite the times he had been hurt.

Dante wanted to ask him. Wanted to see him again.

He'd been using mostly Alastor and Ifrit instead of Force Edge. It surely wouldn't do any harm to just wield Vergil for a little bit.

He'd fought beside Vergil before. Together, they had overwhelmed the power of Sparda.


	2. Zeus

Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry. I'm sorry, my disclaimers haven't been as witty as they used to be for a while now. Still can't think of anything. Will work on fic instead of trying to do comedy no one will read.

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_Zeus _

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"This was my mother's. Now I'm giving it to you." He placed the amulet on the body of the second woman with that face to die to save him.

He stuck the Sparda sword in the marble floor like a grave marker. "My father's also here now." She'd missed him. She'd died missing him. Now he'd defeated Mundus, sealed him for another two thousand years.

It was over. "Rest in peace."

The island would destroy itself around them, a fitting send-off. One last thing.

One last family member.

He took out Vergil's sword. Placing it against Father's sword, about to plant it too in the ground, he hesitated.

Vergil had wanted Father's sword, Father's power. Missed the Father they had never known. He should leave him here. They would all be together.

He would go on alone.

Vergil had thrown himself into the Underworld rather than stay with Dante. He'd wanted that much to approach their father, to dive to certain death.

His soul would want to rest here. Dante wanted to rest here, the child in him that had never gotten over the loss of each of his family, one by one.

Sparda, Eva, Vergil, and now Trish. He'd won, but he was alone.

His hand tightened around the hilt of Vergil's sword. Vergil would want this.

Vergil wanted stupid things. Opening a portal to the Underworld and unleashing demons to gain Father's power and defeat Mundus? It might have worked if he'd told Dante what he was going to do. Dante might have helped him. For vengeance.

For the chance to fight beside his brother.

Sparda's sword was more powerful, but wielding Vergil's sword he'd felt…

He placed the sword on his back again and turned around to leave. Why did he have to be the unselfish one? The one always left behind?

A few rushed minutes later he cursed himself for a sentimental fool. He'd left behind his best weapon, Sparda.

Well, if Mundus wanted to die here that was all right by Dante.

They'd be escorted to the Underworld by their worst enemy. He'd do what his father never had and kill Mundus. The world would be safe.

He'd get to rest.

He wished he believed in a heaven, but there was only Earth and the Underworld.

Still, what a way to go.

He grinned as he wielded Vergil's blade, devil triggering into a midnight-blue Sparda-type demon. Vergil was more powerful than Alastor or Ifrit. Maybe Vergil alone had been beaten by Mundus (Dante refused to believe he'd lost to a lesser demon), but the two of them together had beaten Arkham. Arkham had had Sparda's powers. Sparda had defeated Mundus.

Still, it wasn't enough, and Mundus knew it too. "What is the matter? Here your powers are weak, human!"

Dante panted. Mundus had a portal. If he killed Dante soon enough to escape through it before the castle collapsed and killed him this would all be for nothing. Had to keep him distracted, had to hold on until it was too late.

"Dante, you'll be okay, you can do it." A soft voice comforted him.

"M… Mother?"

And he knew what to do.

Just like how they had defeated Arkham.

"Jackpot," he said confidently as he channeled all of his powers and Vergil's powers into Ebony and Ivory.

Mundus fled. The coward.

A light appeared at one of the walls and Trish appeared. Alive.

Dante laughed.

Trish came over hesitantly. Was she wondering if he was nuts? He'd always been crazy. He hugged her, still laughing.

For an instant, there, he'd felt Vergil. His brother. He had his soul. Trish had brought the amulet and Sparda. He had the devil arm that had his father's soul and he'd heard his mother, he knew it.

This wasn't going to be their burial ground.

His family was here. All of them.

All thanks to Vergil.

He'd kept his half of the amulet safe from Mundus after whatever Mundus did to him. He'd spared Dante through horrible pain.

"You did it, Vergil. You defeated Mundus," Dante whispered.

Trish was crying with relief. "Dante, I, I…"

So she was human enough to cry. Real family. He told her this.

And the castle shook.

Trish was afraid, but Dante wasn't.

"No, Trish, it's never too late."

It had been over twenty-five years since his father had disappeared. Twenty since his mother had died protecting them. Ten since his brother had jumped into the Underworld, daring to fight Mundus without Sparda's power. A few minutes since Trish had sacrificed herself to save him.

And here they all were.

He did a barrel roll in the biplane, just because he could.

He felt like Orpheus, who had gone into hades to retrieve his love.

Only Dante could look back.

Vergil.

He wouldn't have been able to defeat Mundus without Sparda's power. Vergil had known that, that was why he had been so focused on gaining power, gaining Sparda's power. Because Mundus had arisen and had taken their parents from them.

Vergil had been so angry with him for refusing to gain power. The power to protect, the power to survive.

The power to protect.

Dante had been the only thing Vergil had had left to protect.

All Dante had had after Vergil fell was vengeance. Vengeance and a sword that, unlike all his others, was deaf and dumb.

Not that his brother for his father had seemed like a good trade then, when he'd held Sparda responsible for Eva's death. He'd gone away and left her alone to die. It had been a miracle she'd protected them for as long as she had.

He'd wanted human power, Mother's power.

Vergil had wanted Father's power: Mother's wasn't enough to defeat Mundus.

Vergil had been right. If Vergil hadn't retrieved the sword… if Dante hadn't used his power as a devil, Mundus would have won. Earth would be doomed.

He would have to tell Vergil that.

He wanted to tell his brother everything.


	3. Helen

Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry.

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Helen

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Trish stood in front of the desk, Dante behind it. On the desk lay two swords and an amulet. Trish swallowed. Dante stood there with his arms crossed, waiting for her to talk.

Her eyes bounced around the room, looking for a way out. Any way out. Dante wasn't going to like what she had to say. He might even kill her. At the least he might throw her out and she didn't have anywhere else to go. No, more than that, she wanted to stay with him. He had saved her. She had never had anyone care about her before. She treasured that.

But she had done horrible things to a person he had to care about more.

"It's okay, Trish. But I have to know." Dante's voice was firm, no hate in his eyes.

Her eyes fled his, gaze drifting down to the sword nearest Dante. The devil arm. Vergil's devil arm.

"It started long before I was even created. I wasn't told much. He didn't want me to be able to tell you much in case you weren't tricked by me. In case you tortured me to find out about him. What he did want you to know is that he found Vergil in the Underworld after the Tower's portal opened and closed. Vergil challenged him, said if Sparda could do it so could he. Mundus defeated him easily."

"Easily?"

Trish shrugged. "That's what I was told. Then he tortured him, broke his spirit, remade him to serve himself."

"But he wasn't completely Mundus'. He recognized me. He spared my life when he caught me. I was weaponless. He had me up against the wall literally. Then my amulet fell out of where I had tucked it…" Her eyes looked in Dante's, which were far away, lost in memory. "Vergil was still in there, Trish. My brother was still in there. It hurt him, he was clutching his head and groaning. It hurt him to spare me, to try to remember. But he was still in there." His eyes focused again, trapped hers so she couldn't look away. "What happened to him, Trish."

"…Dante, Mundus had him. The son of his worst enemy, the dark knight whose betrayal destroyed his reign. You should ask what _didn't_ happen to him. The little I saw," she swallowed again.

"Tell me, Trish."

"Mundus would display him in the throne room. He would order him to kneel and then blast him to show off or because he was bored. He would stay silent then, cowering. He would order him to kill people. That was when he was in the armor. He would torture them, do whatever Mundus asked, and laugh doing it. But it wasn't a real laugh, it was… " Trish licked her lips. "Mundus showed me… he ordered me to be shown a little. He wanted me to tell you this, Dante. He wanted you to know what had happened to your brother, what was going to happen to you when he defeated you. Don't make me tell you, Dante. You don't want to know."

"Tell me, Trish." Implacable.

"You can guess, Dante. You don't need it confirmed. You know demons feed on pain and suffering. Mundus… he enjoyed it. He did everything he could think of, had his best torturers trying everything they had, even though by the time I was created he didn't fight back, he just screamed and," Trish had enjoyed it back then. Fed on it. Worshipped Mundus' power. That was before she'd met Dante, before she'd understood whatever she was starting to understand. "Don't make me go into detail," she whispered, begging almost.

"Tell me, Trish." Sympathy in Dante's eyes, but he wouldn't be moved. "You'll only be confirming what I've known for years."

"You can still deny it…" by saying it, she would somehow make it real. Her eyes dropped to the blade. She was amazed it was still whole instead of riddled with cracks, it should show some scarring, some sign of the torment. Mundus had tried everything to break him. Had thought for years that he had succeeded in breaking the child who dared challenge him. Had still tortured him. "Dante…"

"Trish."

"He would put him in arenas and order him to kill every last demon until he was exhausted, but he couldn't rest because the compulsion would keep him fighting. He would let his generals use him for target practice. He would loan him to people, old enemies of Sparda, let them do what they wanted."

"Trish, you're not telling me everything."

"He would order him to torture the humans he managed to get his hands on, the sacrifices the worshippers on Mallet gave him and then the worshippers themselves when they weren't useful anymore, the ones who survived capture, as well as the innocent people on the island. Then he would do the same things to him, so he was responsible for his own torment. Told him he was scum, that he deserved everything. He would have spears pin him to the wall, put on display, and he would heal around the spears. Put larvae in his flesh so they ate their way out. He would scream, Dante, and it didn't sound human. I think Mundus burned everything human out of him a long time ago. Oh, he would burn him too. Freeze him." She swallowed. "Rape him." Don't ask don't ask don't ask, but Mundus had been her God and who was going to listen to a traitor like her now? "Everything he could think of, everything Griffon and Phantom could think of…" Don't ask me. Don't make me say I was ordered to practice on him. Practice on him for you. Get him to trust me and then break him down further. Did I remind him of your mother? Was that Mundus' mistake, was that how Vergil broke his conditioning to spare you? He should have hated you.

"He must have hated me." Dante didn't meet her eyes now. "He jumped into hell right in front of me. I tried to grab him, Trish, I tried." He pleaded with her now. "He refused me, but I should have gone. I should have joined him. Maybe together… I should have just given him the damn amulet. Let him have Sparda's power."

"Dante, you didn't know."

"I knew. Maybe I believed he would be fine. Maybe I hated him and wanted him to suffer for everything he'd done to me." Dante turned away. "Trish, you can have the amulet and the Sparda."

"But Dante…"

"I should have given them to him. Now I'm giving them to you."


	4. Morpheus

Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry.

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Morpheus

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Dante slid his new sword under his pillow. It, he, was long enough to stick out on both sides. He always needed to keep a weapon handy, even here.

When he was a kid, he hadn't slept in the same bed as Vergil. They had woken up in the middle of the night and started trying to kill each other over alleged snoring a few too many times. Mother had taken them out of the nursery and put them in separate rooms when they were three or so. They had been glad to get their own rooms. Dante remembered he had had cowboy and space toys while Vergil had wanted medieval toys.

Nevan had volunteered to sleep with him (innuendo intended) when he'd first gotten her. He'd taken his father's sword instead. Rebellion before then. He'd wanted a weapon that wouldn't wake him up.

Or maybe, as much as he'd tried to deny it when he had that chip on his shoulder, he'd wanted his father's company.

He smiled as he remembered deliberately deciding to mount Force Edge on the girly poster as some backhanded revenge.

He wouldn't do that to Vergil.

He wished Vergil would _talk._ He wished Sparda would too. But Force Edge had been sealed and he hadn't heard a word from the Sparda on Mallet. Maybe Father and Vergil were too damaged. Agni and Rudra wouldn't shut up and the ones he wanted to hear from were silent. Story of his life.

He threw himself down on the bed wearing only his boxers. He didn't cover himself with a sheet. You could get tangled in sheets if you were awakened by an attack.

It had been a long night, day, night, and then another day.

His arm placed itself on the hilt of the sword, as usual, and he let his eyes close.

_The oldest nightmare. Vergil ran one way, he ran the other. Mother died and when he saw Vergil years later he was a killer. _

_The nightmare that had started a year after the tower, when he'd stopped being able to lie to himself. When he'd admitted Vergil wasn't coming back as a devil with the Underworld's power, coming back to kick his ass. _

_He knew it was a dream, that he wasn't back there, when Yamato's cruel blade struck his hand and he didn't feel anything. That didn't make it any easier to watch Vergil fall yet again. _

_The fight itself had changed. At first, his nightmares had pictured something like his father, the first devil he had seen. Something like Arkham's stolen form, only bigger. More spikes. _

_Now he saw Vergil jumping into the air, slicing uselessly at a laughing angel that remained high up, our of the reach of even Vergil's phantom blades and orb slices. An angel that fired beams and pink spears. Tired from his fight with Dante, even Vergil couldn't dodge them all. _

_The fight dragged on, every hit in slow motion, the mocking laughter, until Vergil fell to his knees and Mundus landed to crush him to the ground with a stone fist. Again, and again, Vergil trying to lift his sword to fight back but finding the blade too heavy to lift. _

_Out of the shadows around him, up in the sky, tired eyes saw other demons. Watching. Watching the son of Sparda fall before Mundus. Watching his failure. Hearing Mundus proclaim his triumph as Vergil growled, a futile sign of resistance, and struggle to his feet. _

_Watching Mundus hit him with one last beam, seeing him fall exactly as Trish had, Yamato slipping out of lax fingers. Watching Mundus pick him up and call a servant to bring Vergil back to life. _

_Watching him throw Vergil back down hard enough the not-water dented for a second. Watching him jerk to his feet, run for Yamato as Mundus watched, waiting for him to give his best shot, taunting him. _

_Watching him stand there, panting, still in so much pain but refusing to give up, to beg for mercy as Mundus ordered him. Hearing him shout defiance and charge as Mundus took to the dark skies yet again. _

_Dante saw Vergil's eyes flicker to the watchers, those who had seen his humiliating defeat. Saw his pride start to crack. _

_Dante tried to call out to him, come on Vergil, run, you can still make it thought the portal… only it was too late, it had been too late when Dante let Vergil fall. When Dante left him behind. When Dante refused to give him the amulet. _

If someone had been watching Dante they would have seen him start to toss and turn with his mind's effort to join Vergil, to save him. Seen him whisper silently, seen his hand tighten around the hilt of the sword.

_He couldn't do anything. They were hurting his brother, his twin, caging him like an animal, blood flowing everywhere, poison placed in his veins, fire in his eyes until he started to look at death, at oblivion, as a relief. A temporary one, always taken away. _

_The battles, the battles he never won. _

_Until he was ordered to kill a human woman. _

_He was tortured, she was tortured, until she begged him to just give in, just do it, until his trembling hand snapped her neck… and her soul was let free because he was obedient. Obedient. He'd cried then. _

_Easier the next time, his mind pulling away, trying to hide itself inside and escape but always pulled out again. Pain until he didn't really believe there had ever been a time without pain, not for a worthless half breed, traitor's son. _

_No escaping it, no escaping Mundus. _

_Until one more fight, one more opponent he was ordered to torment and kill, otherwise they would have an even harder death… but he'd stopped justifying it and only obeyed. _

_Until a glint of light that hurt more than anything. Spoken to something inside, something he'd succeeded in protecting. Something that hated what he had become. _

_He'd run. He'd come back. Failure wasn't an option. Failure… _

_But he'd failed and there was only cool peace and some emotion he didn't recognize anymore from the new master. _

_Serve the master. He had to serve the master. _

_He waited for the torment to start again. _

Dante jerked enough the blade sliced his arm and he woke up.

Crying.


	5. Pollux

Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry. If I did, Rapture would be made into an anime.

And to think this project started with my Vergil muse going manga on me and wanting to hunt down and kill the people who think he actually worked for Mundus willingly. Apparently he'd rather be tortured.

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Pollux

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Trish and Dante's demon servants stood guard as he chalked the diagrams on the deserted parking lot in the middle of the national park. He didn't want to risk being interrupted.

He'd tried this ritual before, a year or so after he'd gained Force Edge and lost Vergil. He'd thought it was a horrible trade at the time. He still blamed Sparda, a little, for his mother's death. It wasn't a rational hate, he knew that, he certainly hadn't wanted to be killed and abandon Eva to his enemies, but Dante's younger self hadn't cared.

But… he'd craved vengeance. He still did. Sealing Mundus wasn't enough after what had happened to Vergil. He wasn't going to risk some hypothetical future son being able to defeat him again. No, for the safety of humanity Mundus had to die. He'd lost most of his power and supporters after his humiliating defeat at the hands of a half breed, it would take him a long time to heal his wounds, but he could still build up another cult and try again.

Dante had tried this ritual on Force Edge. It was a ritual to repair a damaged spirit of a devil arm, give it the strength to think, talk and take form.

Dante had wanted Sparda's help defending Earth. Wanted to meet his father. And kick his ass for everything that had happened.

Without the amulet being whole, it hadn't worked.

He should be using this ritual on the Sparda. His father was stronger, wiser. He could teach Dante all sorts of tricks. Earth would be safer. This would use up almost every gold, yellow and red orb he had. It would be a long time before he could repeat this ritual.

Reason told him that, but Vergil's blade was the one that stood upright in the middle of the diagram, almost buried in the pile of treasures.

Dante wished he had a statue of the God of Time. He would have to find out how to consecrate one and put it in his office. He would have to use the diagram to invoke it instead, and so many things could go wrong. He hated ritual magic. Mess up one teeny thing and the whole spell could fail. Apparently programming was the same. Well, the God of Time's statues were fairly user-friendly.

Dante cut his wrist, held it open. Blood dripped on the proper points of the diagram. He'd checked everything against the book three times. Now or never. He'd done it right the last time.

"God of Time, I offer the blood of my foes as tribute! Use these immortal souls to resurrect the god of this blade!" he called, the harsh words of the most common demonic tongue forcing his tongue into strange shapes.

And just like that, the red orbs disappeared, the gold and yellow starting to drop to the ground before being absorbed by the blade.

Dante prayed it was just injury that had made Vergil silent. What if his mind had been destroyed? No, he'd recognized Dante, and Trish had said he had recognized her. He had gone against his programming to spare Dante. His brother was still in there.

Just like that it was over, the marks and blood on the ground gone.

Now or never. Dante strode over and picked up the sword. "Vergil, I command you to come forth!"

A blue soul came from the sword, drifting a dozen feet away, glowing brighter and manifesting a devil like Sparda, only midnight blue and smaller, wings wrapped around himself. Was this Vergil's true devil form, triggering off his own devil arm?

Dante and the devil looked at each other. "Vergil?" Dante said quietly.

No response, not a word. "Vergil?" Dante took a step closer.

The devil lifted a massive foot to take a step back, but paused and lowered it again. Fear? Of Dante?

What had made him stay in place? Recognition or trained obedience?

Was this really Vergil? Trish had said Nelo Angelo was the real thing, but Mundus wouldn't have wanted Vergil to escape his grasp. What if this was another copy, like Trish? "I command you to take human form."

A moment of hesitation. Then Vergil stood there, older, the face he'd seen when Nelo Angelo removed his helmet. Midnight blue armor.

Dante walked closer. "Good." Vergil, this was Vergil, he knew it, shrank back a little. Was he frightened just because this was something new? "Vergil, you know me. You recognized me. I'm not going to hurt you." He kept his tone calm, as if he were speaking to a wild animal.

He'd ordered everyone to stay hidden in the trees. Strange demons might frighten Vergil. "I'm Dante. Don't you remember me?"

Confusion in those eyes. "Dante. You're Vergil. Not Nelo Angelo. You're free now." Well, technically he was Dante's devil arm and slave, but those laws were for devils, not humans. "I'm not going to hurt you." He put his hand on Vergil's shoulder. "Can you talk? I command you to say something."

Eyes widened, fear. "He must have ordered you not to talk." Dante patted him on the shoulder. "I'm not going to punish you for not doing what you're told. Do you understand what I'm saying?" That same fear and incomprehension. Dante squeezed his shoulder gently. There was a flinch. "I'm not going to hurt you." He must be used to everyone and everything hurting. "I'm your brother, Dante. You're Vergil. You're free now. Mundus is gone." A shiver when he heard Mundus' name. "You're alive and you're free." Had Mundus ever taunted him with the illusion he had escaped, only to recapture him again?

Mundus had had eleven years. Maybe more than that, devils could control time, like with the Bangle and Dante's secret Quicksilver technique.

Not how many years. How many centuries, Dante realized.

It might take as long to undo the damage. He was going to have to study, wasn't he? He couldn't take Vergil to an ordinary psychologist. He didn't want anyone to find out Vergil, the traitor twin, was back. They might try to kill him before he became a menace again.

"Get back in the sword," Dante told him gently. This order was complied with instantly.

"Trish!" Dante yelled. "Everyone, get in the sidecar and change back to weapons! We're heading back home!"

Vergil was alive. Dante had his soul. That was enough for now, he told himself. Surely he would get his brother back with time?

Damn Mundus. He was going to kill him. He and Vergil were going to kill him, together. The way he should have helped him over a decade ago.


	6. Castor

Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry.

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Castor

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Dante closed the door of the guest room behind him. "Vergil, come forth." The blue devil appeared. Did he feel safer in the stronger form. "Be a human." The armored form again, not quite the same as Nelo Angelo but close. "Hold still." Dante started to feel around. How did this armor come off? "Please take the armor off," he said gently.

It disappeared. Dante reached into the dresser and took out the blue pyjamas he had brought. "Put these on." He had to help Vergil into them, he didn't seem to quite remember how human clothing worked. Before, Vergil had kept his gaze downcast, eyes averted, as much as possible. Except when addressed directly. Now, he kept stealing glances at Dante, face blank. Dante kept smiling, careful not to show his teeth. That always drew a flinch from Vergil.

Dante pulled back the covers of the bed. "Now get in, Vergil." He knew Dante was addressing him. Surely he at least knew his own name? Vergil sat on the bed and Dante had to adjust him into a comfortable position before pulling the blankets back up. Vergil drew them up even farther, covering him entirely. Then they lowered a bit and eyes peeked out.

Dante patted his head. Vergil sunk away from the first pet, but then permitted the gesture of affection. "Okay, you get a good day's sleep. I'll check on you in the afternoon."

He started to head for the door and he heard a soft sound of distress. He paused and turned around. "Vergil? Do you want me to stay?" If he stayed, Vergil might be scared enough of the big powerful devil he wouldn't be able to sleep.

But Vergil didn't seem to want to be alone, either. Dante walked around to the other side of the bed and lay down on top of the sheets, somehow feeling that if Vergil was the only one under the thin protection of the covers he might feel safer. Eyes tracked his movements now and was that a flicker of relief? "I'm going to stay right here, Vergil. I'll watch over you. I won't let anything happen to you. I'd die _permanently_ before I let Mundus take you back." The flicker of fury in his eyes scared Vergil again. The head went under the covers.

The amulet had been what had triggered Vergil's memories before. Dante made a note to get it from Trish in the morning. He should also see if Vergil could stand being around Trish. He had a feeling he was going to need all the help he could get looking after Vergil, as much as he wished he could do everything for him himself. This wasn't going to be quick and easy. He'd spent twenty years trying to get his revenge and he still hadn't gotten total revenge.

He let himself go to sleep, hoping the demonic bond of master and devil arm would override any traps Mundus might have set in Vergil's head. Was Mundus smart enough to anticipate this situation? Probably not, but he had had smart people working for him, like Griffon. Like Sparda once upon a time, and Nevan… Mundus sucked at personnel retention. He snorted at the thought, a welcome bit of comic relief.

He woke a few hours later. When he shifted Vergil poked his head out from under the covers. He was probably hungry. When had he last eaten? Dante should have fed him before they slept. "Hold on a second, Vergil, I'll get you something to eat." Pasta would be easy on his stomach, right?

Ten minutes later he headed back up with a plate of spaghetti. He opened the door. Vergil wasn't in the bed. "Vergil?"

A head poked up from the other side of the bed. Vergil had hid between it and the wall and pulled the blankets over to cover himself. Dante walked over there and knelt. "I have food, Vergil. Here, see?" Maybe Vergil would trust the food if Dante ate some first himself? Dante took a bite. "It's pretty good."

A hand reached out and took some. "Come on, Vergil, eat it." Vergil looked dubious and ate it slowly. He trusted Dante enough to eat? Or was it just obedience? Vergil kept looking to Dante. For reassurance? Dante kept chattering in a calm, kind voice, saying Vergil's name as much as he could. "I'm Dante, I'm your brother, I won't do anything to hurt you." Again.

When Vergil had eaten the pasta he suddenly stopped eating and whimpered, then doubled over and retched. Dante cursed. "Come on, let's get you cleaned up."

Vergil let himself be tugged out from his flimsy shelter into the bathroom, where Dante took off his clothes, sat him down on the toilet and started to run a bath. "Wait one second."

"Trish?" He found Trish in her room. "What did they feed him?"

"Blood."

Dante should have known. "Trish, come with me. I want to see if you scare him."

Trish followed, looking like she was going to an execution.

Vergil froze when he saw here, that same mixture of fear and confusion that Dante still seemed to give him. It wasn't panic. "Come on, Vergil, get in the tub." Dante gently put him in. "Whatever you did, Trish, looks like it wasn't too bad." Unless he was just out of reach. No, he'd responded to Dante. Dante bit his wrist open and held the wound open with a finger. "Come on, Vergil, drink, okay?" He put the wound to Vergil's lips.

Vergil clamped on like a remora. "They didn't let him have food often," Trish said quietly. "He would have to fight for it, feed from something Mundus ordered him to kill. Then they'd drag him away while he was still hungry, unless it was a human. They'd let him stuff himself and then he would be sick."

They could try to heal the damage to his cells. Dante fumbled in his pocket with his free hand for blue orbs. He touched one to Vergil. Drained in an instant. He put it back and took out another. And another. And another. "Damn." He said quietly. Vergil started to look less pale after the sixth. Or maybe that was the blood.

Dante stroked Vergil's hair again before gently detaching his mouth. "That should be enough for now. Don't want you to get sick, Vergil." Any more sick. "Trish, could you hold out the amulet?" Trish obeyed.

Vergil tentatively reached out to touch it. The sight seemed to soothe him a little. He looked at Trish, then at Dante. Curiosity?

The moment passed and Vergil tried to fit all of himself under the water. It was a big tub. "Trish, stay with him. I'm going to go change the sheets in his room."

She nodded.

"Keep talking to him," Dante told her. "Keep it gentle, say his name. Mother's name was Eva."

"I know." Vergil's head had poked up. Had he heard the name Eva?

"This is Dante," Trish said quietly, pointing at him.

"I'll be right back, Vergil." He gently closed the door, no matter that he wanted to slam it.

He wanted, he needed to kill something. He hoped they got a call tonight. But that would mean leaving Vergil alone with Trish.


	7. Eos

Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry.

- - - - - -

Eos

- - - - - -

Dante watched Vergil as he banged away on the drums. Vergil sat and listened. He'd been scared of the loud noises at first, but now he could listen for hours. Dante wanted to play the guitar for him but since his guitars had all been destroyed when he shop was wrecked and he'd gotten Nevan the same day he didn't have any normal guitars. Vergil still hid behind Dante or Trish if there was another demon in the room.

Thinking of that, Dante felt depressed and quit playing. His heart wasn't in it anymore. He went over and knelt down next to Vergil. "It's been seven months, Vergil. I know your vocal cords are healed. You're… mostly not scared of me anymore." Though there were times Vergil cowered in his blanket fort and didn't come out unless ordered, shivering. Dante left him alone then. No one ever went into the blanket fort with Vergil, or under the covers, although whenever he slept Dante was there with him even if it meant sending Trish or another demon out on a job solo.

"You're doing really well. You're winning, Vergil. He tried to break you and you're not broken." Was he trying to convince Vergil or himself? "You're not cowering all the time, or hiding. You've stopped gorging yourself." Because he trusted there would be more food or because he'd caught Dante's disapproval?

Dante's fingers dug themselves into Vergil's hair. Massages were touch without pain. Vergil was often horribly knotted from tension. Every time Dante touched him, every day without pain Vergil trusted a little more.

Or was it just that he was learning that Dante, the master, didn't like it when he showed pain or fear? Dante was sure Mundus had loved it when Vergil cowered or stood shock-still, too terrified to move, frozen in place by conditioning until an order was given.

Vergil would follow Dante or Trish without being told to. He could hold down human food. He could keep himself clean.

He still hadn't spoken a word.

"I'm Dante. You're Vergil. My twin brother and I love you." He'd wanted to tell Vergil that before… but he'd known Vergil would just scoff at him. Maybe he should have said it anyway. Stupid pride… he'd been such an _idiot_ punk when he was younger. No wonder Vergil couldn't stand him.

Hadn't trusted him enough to let him help. To avenge his mother? He would have helped raise Temen ni Gru for that. Undoing his father's oh so famous heroism would have been appealing back then.

Dante leaned forward so his forehead touched Vergil's. He could still barely feel him. When he outright reached for him he received a terrified flood of suffering, giving him what demons fed on so he wouldn't, hopefully, torment Vergil to get more. Had Mundus _fed_ _on_ his brother? The thought made Dante bare his teeth.

The sight made Vergil unhappy, it didn't exactly scare him. So many great leaps forward it made him want to scream. Little basic things.

Little things that were so wrong.

Vergil liked things that were red, preferred them to blue. He'd curled up in Dante's jacket and when Dante had experimentally given him a choice between a red shirt and a blue one he'd picked red. Dante remembered his most recent trip to the Underworld. He would have thought Vergil would be sick of red. How much of his own blood had Vergil seen spilled?

Vergil had missed nine years of history, time in which so much had changed. Dante kept the news on as much as he could to get Vergil used to voices, changing lights and sounds. He still had to keep all his devil arms outside, patrolling the area.

Dante had always been a little careless, he'd wanted demons to come to him so Devil May Cry's magical defenses had been laughable. Now the place was layered with wards and he'd become incredibly paranoid.

It was… all the memories he had of Vergil ended with him disappearing and things between them getting worse. How many would do anything to get their hands on a weakened son of Sparda? Vergil wouldn't even fight unless he was ordered to.

"I won't let anything happen to you, Vergil. Not again." Dante squeezed his shoulder. "I'm sorry I was such a fool. I should have seen what you were trying to do instead of just being so mad at you. You did do some stuff… I hated you, no, I didn't, and I was angry with myself that I couldn't hate you. Just… everything was crazy, I was crazy, you weren't exactly Mr. Rational yourself. We were too goddamn young. No one should have the fate of the world in their hands until they're at least thirty." And here he was twenty-nine. "I hated Pop, you know. He died and left us alone, left Mother alone. She used to cry herself to sleep some nights she missed him so bad. I never told you about that, I think you didn't know."

Dante took a deep breath. "I did it, I did what Father did, what you were trying to do. It's… not over, it's not over until he's _dead_ and beyond resurrection, but nothing's going to happen to you. I'll take care of you, Trish will too." He pulled Vergil closer, tucked his head on his shoulder. "Everything's going to be okay, I can wait, you'll talk eventually. Do you understand what I'm saying? I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." After that he fell silent.

His face was wet, drops running into Vergil's hair. They didn't want to scare him with blades near him so it was long. He didn't quite look like Vergil without his hair pushed back. He looked younger. Did he have the mind of a child? Was there really even a mind left in there? Would he be like this forever, a doll? Was keeping him happy the best they could hope for?

Would he ever forgive Dante?

Vergil's hands pawed at Dante. Dante pulled back, looked at him. "I'm sorry if I scared you. It's just tears, it won't hurt you. I'll be fine in a second, just… it's not your fault."

"Da… Dante. Devils n-never cry."


	8. II Angel Arm: Mnemosyne

_Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry. _

_Angel Blade was originally going to be a stand alone, but since I've gotten so many requests to continue it, here we are. I'm planning to make it a trilogy, This is part II, Angel Arm. _

_-_

_Mnemosyne_

_- _

Dante stared and looked at Vergil, who was frowning at his tears and in that disapproval looking more like Vergil than he had since Dante had gotten him back. "What?" That was all he could say in response.

"Devils never cry."

"Vergil?" Dante asked, a hand reaching up to grasp Vergil's face so Dante could study those eyes. Satisfaction there, that Dante had stopped crying.

"Dante." Vergil blinked, eyes unfocusing a little.

"Vergil!" Dante laughed and squeezed him. "You're back!"

Vergil was silent. Dante pulled back a little and looked at him again. "…tell me you're not relapsing."

"I remember enough. I won't forget." Unflinching. Didn't Vergil want to remember?

"That's great!" Dante squeezed him again and Vergil hugged back hesitantly, somehow unsure, and again not quite Vergil, for Vergil had never been unsure. "You're back! You beat him!"

"No, you defeated him. I lost." Self contempt. The tone was familiar, it had always been directed at Dante, but never at Vergil. Vergil seemed to be collapsing in on himself, pulling back somehow even though he stayed in Dante's arms.

"Yeah, thanks to you not killing me. Everything he must have done to you and you still recognized me enough to spare me."

"It wouldn't have been the first time I hurt you. And before I didn't have the excuse of Mundus' control."

"Vergil, we… we were both fucked up. You did what you thought you had to do."

"I wish I hadn't. You shouldn't have cast that spell on me. You should have revived Father."

"Hell no. You're my brother. He… He's fine in the sword, you're the one who had the crap happen to you."

Vergil pulled back a little more. "What's wrong?" Dante asked, and felt incredibly stupid. Everything Vergil had been through… and he'd just reminded him. What if he gave him flashbacks or something? Little things had done it before, like seeing the forks that time.

Vergil shivered and suddenly darted forward, squeezing Dante like a lifeline, like he was terrified of something and Dante was his only safety, but it didn't ease his fear. Dante held him and stroked his back as Vergil began to shiver and pressed his face against Dante's chest and nuzzled fiercely, pleadingly? Why had he thought pleadingly?

"You should…" Vergil whispered and silenced himself.

"Should what?" Dante knew he shouldn't have asked. This was the breakthrough he'd been pleading for, he shouldn't push Vergil.

Vergil's hands fisted, gripping Dante's coat and he shivered again. "I shouldn't be here. I hurt you." Dante felt Vergil reach out, slightly, fearfully, and tried to reassure him. "You should hate me. I'm… what they did to me…" Another shiver, and Vergil pushed himself away from Dante so violently and quickly he was out of Dante's arms before he could react, away on the ground and clawing at himself, tearing away his flesh until blood came, eyes shut and rocking.

"Vergil!" Dante yelled, horrified.

"Don't touch me! I'm unclean, a monster!"

"No you're not! You're my brother! Don't listen to what they told you, you're a hero! I'll help you, Vergil, we can… you'll get better! Just stop hurting yourself!" Vergil fought like a madman to escape Dante's grasp, but he never struck at Dante. He batted at him, but seemed afraid to fight for real.

Then he collapsed and let Dante haul him up and rock him. "Vergil, it'll be okay. I love you, I'll help you. We'll beat this. We'll kill him."

"No! I don't want to… don't make me go back there, I… he'll find me, you've got to get rid of me, what if he uses me to attack you, I don't want to be used again, I've already hurt you so much and you still… just kill me!"

And now Vergil was crying. "Vergil," Dante said soothingly, wiping away the tears. "Devils never cry."

"I'm a devil and I'm crying." Vergil sniffed.

"You're still human. Everything he did to you, and you're still human enough to cry. You're talking to me. I was worrying…" Dante squeezed him again. "We'll beat this, Vergil. I won't rest until you're better."

"I can't forget it, it's all in my head, and it's not just what he did. I deserved it! I was weak and I hurt you instead of allying with you. Weak and I craved power that wasn't mine, tried to steal instead of swallowing my pride and…" a shiver. "I hurt you. I don't deserve… You've been so kind and… I don't deserve it."

"Well, you're going to get it," Dante replied fiercely. "You're my brother, even after everything you've done. I've got you back and I am _not_ going to lose you again. Hell no." A bone-crushing embrace. "Vergil, I missed you. And now you're here again."

"I should have died in battle, not… I'm a disgrace to Sparda's bloodline."

"No, I'm the official disgrace."

"And you're the one who defeated Mundus, wielded Father's power. I'm… I wouldn't have deserved his power. You had to stop me. You should have killed me then, Dante."

"Hell no."

"Don't say that word," Vergil said softly, pleadingly, as he started to shake. "I can see it, see them, and…" He tried to escape Dante again, but was held fast.

"I love you, I forgive you even if you were a stupid bastard, I was a stupid bastard to and you should be pissed at me, and you're staying here so I can take care of you. You're going to get better, Vergil, you've already improved so much. So proud of you," Dante tried to temper his fierceness, be soothing. He rocked his shaking brother who looked so young. He'd always been more slender than Dante and now with long hair he looked like a girl.

Dante had always had a thing about damsels in distress. He wouldn't let Vergil down either.

"Come on, let's get you up to bed. I think you need a nap. It'll be okay, Vergil, it'll all be okay."

"How can you stand me?" Vergil muttered, and allowed himself to be led.

Allowed himself to be tucked under the covers, stared in shock as Dante got on the bed himself and pulled Vergil to him, but let himself be held. He clearly wanted to be held. Did he think Dante wouldn't care for him anymore just because he could talk now?

Now he remembered his crimes did he think he didn't deserve Dante's care?

Dante didn't weep anymore for his brother. Vergil wouldn't want that, and he would do anything to make Vergil happy.


	9. Alecto

_Disclaimer: I do not own Devil May Cry. _

_- _

_Alecto_

_- _

Vergil lay there and wished he could sleep. He pretended to sleep, but knew he wasn't fooling Dante for a minute. He could feel concern, sorrow, none of the hate that should have been there.

Vergil knew he had chosen his own fate. Pride had been his fatal sin. That and greed.

Greed for his father's power, his father's approval, and let's add envy to the list.

He couldn't believe Dante didn't hate him. He had, once.

It must have been years here as well as in hell. Given that there didn't seem to be Jetsons-esque futuristic devices in Dante's new shop, it had probably been longer in hell. Or at least felt that way. Or perhaps Dante was only old-fashioned.

Dante was warm, and Vergil had dim memories (or was he only imagining them? So much he wished he remembered, like his father, and so much he wished he hadn't remembered) of sleeping next to him, holding each other like favorite teddy bears.

Vergil remembered destroying Dante's Polar out of spite when Dante favored it. Mother had been angry, he'd been angry that Dante was turning away from him.

He'd always destroyed everything Dante loved.

Dante was always kind to weaker things (like humans): now he was pitiful and broken all seemed to be forgiven. Dante was just grateful to have him back. Once Vergil was better he would punish him for his crimes.

Vergil wished he hadn't remembered. He didn't deserve to be held like this. He was the spawn of a trait-no! He might be a disgrace to Sparda's legacy, but it was a proud one!

But if he hadn't… he was the weak and foolish one, not seeing what Father had seen. Dante was the one who had defeated Mundus, rescuing Vergil as Vergil had come to rescue him from Arkham. In the end, however, it had been Dante's weapons that dealt the final blow. The weapons that Vergil had despised.

He shivered now, and wished he hadn't, not out of pride, for he had none left, but because it would distress Dante. Dante's arm touched him gently, and he craved the reassurance. He wasn't alone anymore. He was safe.

But Dante wasn't safe. What if…

He shivered again, curled closer to Dante's warmth. The one thing he had kept was that sense of _missing_ something, like an arm or a leg or some vital organ. His heart? He'd thrown that away years ago.

He was crying now, and Dante held him. Dante shouldn't hold him, he would get dirty. Pushing Dante away would make him think Vergil didn't want him, though. Vergil would never give him that idea again. The lie had gone on too long. Torn them apart. All Vergil's fault. If he'd told Dante what his goal was, then Dante could have defeated Mundus. Dante was Sparda's true heir. Vergil had thrown himself away.

He was nothing.

He didn't deserve to be held like this, loved like this, he didn't deserve all the trouble Dante had gone through to soothe him and take care of him when he was mindless.

It was wrong of him to wish he was still mindless. He should take care of himself so Dante wouldn't be troubled. Then he would be alone like he should be and Dante wouldn't hear him crying and feel sad like Dante felt sad now, Vergil wasn't worth feeling sad for, he'd made Dante sad too much and his guilt cut him like knives more blunt and rusted than any Mundus' torturers had had for so long in the dark except when it was too bright.

He'd broken, he'd been Mundus toy.

What if this was all a trick? What if Vergil's mind had clouded enough he had fallen for a false Dante? Mundus had tried before but Vergil had known somehow, tried to tear apart the thing even though he hadn't known why he was enraged: then the thing had torn him apart…

The fake Mother was here. Wouldn't Dante destroy an abomination like that?

Dante hadn't destroyed him. All those fights, and never a final blow.

Vergil was weak, if Dante had ever truly tried to kill him, once he'd remembered, then… No, he'd been stronger than Dante.

Hard to believe he had ever been stronger than Dante, feeling his power now. The power of the Black Angel had possessed him, that was how the puppet-him had defeated Dante. Vergil, now, would never be able to do it. Never again. The poison must run too deep, he would never recover.

And the thought of attacking Dante again… He shuddered, and Dante's arm squeezed him gently, careful not to scare him but he was already beyond scared.

He deserved to be destroyed. He wanted Dante to destroy him, Dante deserved to. Dante was his master now, he didn't want anyone to take him away from Dante again. If he was more damaged, his soul would sleep. Maybe instead of being a sword he would become a technique and his soul would sleep inside Dante. That would be nice. Better than he deserved.

He could feel Dante, half-blind, try to reach out to him. Gently, gently, and why was Dante trying not to hurt him when Vergil had hurt him so much?

He would feel better if Dante tortured him to gain power. He knew that, that was his place in his Father's home. Hell, where he belonged. He knew that.

Knew it too well.

Dante deserved to hurt him. He deserved to be hurt by Dante, not given this kindness that hurt. Had they done this to him? Made him so that feelings that should soothe burnt like fire?

Or was it only his guilt?

He should tell Dante, beg him to destroy his devil arm. But that would feel like yet another rejection to Dante. He couldn't hurt him, even though it would be better for him. Then the pain would stop, but Vergil deserved to hurt, it was right…

Dante reached out and Vergil gave him the pain. See? I'm sorry for all I've done (please don't hurt me anymore, but I should be hurt… so confusing), I'm sorry, so sorry…

And he felt answering pain from Dante. No! He didn't want to hurt him! Never hurt him again! But Dante should be happy Vergil hurt?

"Sorry!" _Sorrysorrysosorry!_

"It's okay." Dante's eyes were opened now and he tried to smile. "I'm so sorry, Vergil. It's all my fault."

"No!" Dante felt guilty Dante was hurting Vergil was making Dante hurt! "No!"

Dante just held him.


	10. Tisiphone

_Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry. _

_-_

_Tisiphone _

_-_

His brother wasn't sleeping.

He was sobbing. Quietly, and no tears fell, but Dante could feel the misery in the air. Vergil was under the covers, that made him off-limits. He was already embracing him, that was a little over the line. Still.

Dante bent and nuzzled the top of Vergil's head. Vergil tensed, seeming divided between pulling away and inching closer.

I'm so sorry, Vergil, was what Dante wanted to say.

Part of him actually wished Vergil hadn't remembered. Before, he had been… not like this. None of this, what must be guilt. He'd been scared, he was still scared now, but…

Dante remembered when _he_ had remembered. He'd wanted to go back to blissful ignorance. Would Vergil try to bury the new memories?

The doll wasn't enough. Dante wanted his brother. Even though it hurt Vergil to be Vergil. "Hey." Get him talking, distract him.

Vergil tensed again. "D-Dante?"

"I'm not going to… I forgive you, Vergil. You were fucked up, yeah, and you did some real bad stuff, but I know why you did it. If you hadn't, Mundus would probably be ruling earth now and I would have been killed or captured just like you. So…" He wasn't good at this. "You're my brother. I love you." Missed him so much, all these years.

"You shouldn't. All I did was…"

"All you did? Vergil, we had eight years together, just being brothers. Sure, we fought, but we were best friends. And not all the stuff that happened after you found me again was you trying to kill me. You let me have the amulet back, we were partners those times… Vergil, don't be an idiot."

"I _am_ an idiot." His voice was muffled, face pressed into the pillow.

Dante carefully turned Vergil's head to face him and nuzzled him on the forehead. Back when Vergil was regressed Nevan had told Dante to treat him like a devil nestling. Lots of physical contact, both to teach him that not everything hurt, and to use touch, scent and emotion to reaffirm the twin bond and tell Vergil subconsciously that he could trust Dante. It still seemed to work now that Vergil was more Vergil, Dante nuzzled his forehead and Vergil relaxed minutely.

"Yeah, you were an idiot, but so was I. Come on, Vergil, we were teenagers. We were allowed to be idiots. You weren't father. You shouldn't have tried to measure yourself against him. You're Vergil, you'll never be Sparda."

"Yes." Quiet, too quiet, and Vergil pressed his head against Dante's chest.

That was a good sign, that he was taking comfort, at least.

"It's… if only Mom hadn't died, if only Dad hadn't died, if only we had… But that's not what happened."

"I'm so sorry."

"Why? Did you kill Dad? I was the one that came to hate him. If it weren't for you… Vergil, you saved the world just as much as I did."

"No. You wielded Sparda's sword. I could never touch his full power. I wasn't worthy."

"Vergil, you only had half the amulet. Of course you didn't have the full power."

"I'm only a half-breed…"

"So am I."

"And I despised what I am. I despised Mother's blood. She must hate me. Father must hate me, you must hate me."

"I don't. I never did, even when I tried really hard. Even when I didn't know what you were up to and thought I had to kill you… I wanted to kill you not just for the world, but for you."

"When we were children… my younger self would rather have died than grow up into me. I'm nothing, Dante. A disgrace to my Father's and Mother's blood. You're the Son of Sparda. I'm nothing. If only…"

"Shut it, Vergil." Dante tilted Vergil's head up and covered his mouth with a hand, looking into eyes that shouldn't be so different from his. Old pain, new despair. Eyes that closed rather than face him. "We both fucked up. I let you fall."

"You tried to stop me."

"If I'd thought, I could have used Cerberus, or sent Nevan. I wasn't thinking, Vergil. That's me all over. Idiot."

"You succeeded where I failed. You're stronger than me. More worthy."

"Um, Vergil? You've kicked my ass twice, back then and on Mallet. You beat Mundus."

"What?" Eyes opened to stare.

"Mundus tried to have you kill me. You managed to resist all the _shit_ he did to you, fight it off enough to spare my life. If you hadn't done that, I would have died and Mundus would have won. Only because of you was I able to beat Mundus. Not just that! Because of you I had the sword… Vergil, you're… I can't imagine what he did to you, but you survived. You're even sane and you're talking to me. That… You're so strong."

"I'm sorry, Dante. It was the amulet, not me. When I saw it… I…" He seemed to be chasing after some fragment of memory.

Dante tugged him closer, squeezed him. "It's okay, Vergil." He nuzzled him again, and tentatively Vergil nuzzled back.

"I don't deserve you," Vergil said. "You should have left my devil arm there to rot. You really shouldn't have revived me."

"Yeah, I know. You would have been at peace then. But come on, do you really want Mundus to win? You're beating him, Vergil. He tried to destroy you and you're putting yourself back together."

"You're putting me back together. But so many pieces are lost or cracked… I'll never be whole again. Even if I was whole, I'd still be Vergil, and I _hate_ Vergil. Vergil hurt you. You're so kind, you make me feel so safe, but you should hate me."

"Bullshit, Vergil. You're my brother. I love you. Nothing in hell is going to change that."

"I hated you."

Dante had known this, but it still cut him like a knife. No, a knife, even Alastor, was nothing next to that. "I knew. But still. I won. I'm not going to lose, you hear me?"

"You should kill me."

"Hell no, Vergil. I won you, you're mine, end of story. We're going to be a family, like we should have been, and nothing's going to change that."

"I'm sorry," Vergil apologized, and nuzzled him in remorse.


	11. Megaera

_Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry. _

_- _

_Megaera _

_-_

Vergil seemed stiff around Trish, now that he remembered, instead of having that same trust of her that he did Dante. Dante guessed it was because he knew she wasn't Mother now. Sometimes, though, he seemed perfectly comfortable around her, much more than he would be with a regular demon, and Dante knew he was having the same problem Dante was.

Trish was Trish, and a friend, but sometimes they looked at her and saw Eva, even if they weren't consciously aware of it. Dante was trying to stamp this out in himself, it wasn't fair to Trish, who was her own person now. But he thought, all in all, that it was a good thing in Vergil. At least he trusted somebody besides Dante, and Dante could leave him with Trish when he went out instead of staying in all the time, which would have been suspicious.

He hadn't told anyone Vergil was back yet, not even Lady, who semi-blamed herself for what had happened to him and definitely had a right to know. Paranoia was a good thing when they might be out to get Vergil.

He was, after all, the traitor son. Even Dante had thought that once.

Hell to think it was progress when Vergil broke down and sobbed in his arms. Vergil had always been the strong one, and now?

At least he was letting it out, all that poison in him, everything he had suffered through. Though it was probably only taking a drop from the sea.

Vergil wore blue now, not because he wanted to, he seemed to stiffen when he saw himself in the mirror, but because he felt he had to. Dante had draped his coat over Vergil's shoulders and Vergil had cheered up immensely.

Vergil was so, so needy. It was like if Dante didn't show he cared about him, forgave him, didn't hate him, in a thousand little ways each day, he despaired and hid in his room.

Dante didn't get irritated at Vergil. He got irritated at Mundus. Visions of invading the Underworld, Vergil by his side, and finally killing the bastard danced in his head. But would Vergil ever be well enough to enter the Underworld willingly? When he was afraid of even the demons Dante had subdued?

When he flinched at the sight of Yamato's blade?

Had Mundus had stuff done to Vergil with his own father's sword, his prized heirloom?

That _bastard._

He watched movies together with Vergil, and damn if it wasn't everything he'd wanted while they were separated, to be together with his brother without anybody getting impaled. Family togetherness. Vergil buried himself in learning about the human world, when before he'd cared nothing about it at all. Dante knew Vergil was trying to distract himself, but at least it was productive and kept him happy.

Hell knew Dante's own methods of distracting himself had been a lot more destructive. Though killing demons didn't seem to be on Vergil's list.

Dante knew he had to get Vergil back up on the horse. Once he knew he could kill demons, he'd feel safer, right?

But he'd been able to kill weak demons before and that hadn't saved him. Regardless, _Dante_ would feel better if he knew Vergil could fight. Anything or anyone after Vergil would probably not be stupid enough to attack while Dante was home. Trish was tough, but not in Dante's league, and Vergil… what if he froze in flashbacks, or something? If he was going to do that, better do it against low-level demons while Dante was there and could make him turn into a devil arm so he'd be safe.

He was able to talk now, right? He'd be able to fight eventually. Vergil had always been the sword guy out of the two of them. A Vergil who couldn't fight just… wasn't Vergil, in the same way that a Vergil who didn't talk wasn't.

He could do without the impaling and the snide remarks. Vergil, to him, was the brother he had been before Mother had died.

That was the Vergil he'd do anything to get back, even imperfectly.

So that was why he was standing her with him in the backyard, watching Vergil shoot. His hands had wobbled at first, now he was perfect, once again. "Great, Vergil."

Vergil hadn't hesitated to pick up the gun. Now, he looked for a long time at the wooden practice sword. "What's wrong, Vergil."

His brother steeled himself. "Nothing, Dante. Only… nothing." He picked up the sword and walked over to the practice dummy.

He was wearing a white shirt and jeans, not the elegant coat (it would be too suspicious to have one made), but now he looked like Vergil. Strangely, though, he was restricting himself to the less flashy moves. Sure, if he was getting back on the horse, he'd do the easy ones first, the basic ones to check his style, but he didn't start working on the hard ones.

He was only doing the ones a human could do, Dante realized, and called over, "Let's spar, Vergil."

Vergil froze.

"Come on," Dante beckoned him. "I'll go easy on you."

"…yes, Dante." Why was he coming over like a man going to his execution? They'd always loved to fight each other, even when Vergil had been disgusted at him and they'd been enemies. That had been as close as they could get.

Was Vergil afraid Dante would hurt him like he had the last times they'd fought? Vergil afraid of him. Dante hated this. Well, he'd show Vergil he wouldn't hurt him. Like a wounded bird, a hawk. Had to coax him, teach him. He'd learn, he'd get better.

He had to.

They fought, kept it to the speed a human eye could see.

Vergil was pulling his blows, so Dante did too. This felt like slow-motion, though for a human it would be blindingly fast.

Then Vergil landed a hit, and collapsed to the ground, sobbing and clutching his head.


	12. Eris

_Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry._

_-_

_Eris _

_- _

In a second after Vergil collapsed, Dante was there, kneeling and wrapping his arms around him. "Vergil? Vergil!"

"Sorry sorry so sorry," Vergil babbled. "Didn't mean to won't ever… don't hurt me…"

"I'm not going to hurt you, Vergil," Dante assured him. "Won't happen again. You're safe now. I'm sorry I attacked you before." Was Vergil remembering fighting Dante as Nelo Angelo? Dante had gone all out, then.

Vergil was afraid of Dante hurting him now? All this time he had felt safe around Dante, well, safer than being alone or with anyone else. Now, if he was afraid of Dante would he feel safe at all? Would he always be afraid until… Vergil would beat this. They would beat this.

"He… he used me and I hurt you. Almost… I almost killed you." Vergil gulped.

"It wasn't your fault," Dante assured him. "You weren't yourself."

"I was in there. I jumped into hell, all my fault I'm the weak one." He shivered. "I…"

"It's okay now. I won't hurt you, you won't hurt me," Dante said quietly, trying to get through to him. "Take deep breaths."

Vergil complied instantly, eerily obedient. "I am sorry I upset you." He was cringing, in shame or fear? Both?

"It's okay, Vergil. What caused this?"

"I… facing you, sparring, I remembered fighting, I remembered being used, and how I…"

"You didn't kill me, Vergil. You spared my life. You're a hero, Vergil."

"No, I'm the one that lost. You should have killed me. The weak deserve to die."

Even before, Vergil hadn't quite thought that… had he? "That's what Mundus thinks. What devils think. You're not just a devil, you're a human. Humans have rights, humans have intrinsic value. You're a person, Vergil, my brother, not just a thing valued for how well you can fight or how much you can suffer."

"I deserved it. I chose it. I gave myself to Mundus."

"No!" Dante yelled, and regretted his hotheadedness when Vergil cringed. "You went to fight him."

"I knew I would lose, I knew what losers deserve. I let myself be used against you. I don't deserve to be here," Vergil clung to him. "I don't deserve you to be so kind. I hurt you even when I… before he got me. I killed people, lots of them, you know this. I…"

"You're still my brother. Haven't you suffered enough? You didn't torture people, you killed them quick, at least. If they were around to ask, I'm sure if they really knew what you'd gone through they'd say it was enough. You went to _hell, _Vergil, for your sins."

"I belong there," Vergil said quietly.

"You do _not_ belong to Mundus. Not even by devil law. I beat you, I won you, you're mine, so I can do what I want with you. I'll take care of you, and forgive you whether you think you deserve it or not. I want you to be happy and get better, so if you think being a devil is the right way to do things, than be a devil and obey your master."

"I wish I wasn't a demon," Vergil choked on the words, misery rising again. "I'll obey you!" he assured Dante hurriedly. _Don't hurt me_ was a thread beneath those words.

"You're a human."

"I'm a demon servant. I'm not a good human, Mother would have loved me if I was."

"The hell?" She loved you!"

"Not as much as you. I tried to make it so Father would have loved me. He would despise me now. Mother would despise me, I'm a murderer. I gave myself to his worst enemy, let myself be used as a weapon against my own twin! I wish I was _nothing. _I'm not a devil. I'm too weak to ever be one."

"Did Mundus tell you this?"

"Dante, Dante do you love me?"

"What… of course I do! You're my brother?"

Vergil smiled up at him. "Then kill me again."

"What?"

"Hurt me until I'm too damaged to maintain this form, so I go back in the devil arm. You must want to hurt me, I deserve to be hurt. I'm a traitor to humanity, to Father, to Mother, to you. If you do it right, I won't be able to think at all. I'll be too weak. You could use a spell to make sure I would never wake up. I'd… I don't deserve to help you, to be your weapon, but maybe you could give me to a human? I… I don't want to feel this, Dante. I don't want to remember." Vergil shivered, looking in Dante's eyes. "I don't want to be shameful. What they did to me, I can't get it out of my head. What I did to you, to…"

"Vergil, I'm not going to do it."

Vergil looked like he was about to beg, then a bolt of fear went through him and he bowed his head. "Yes, Dante." It sounded like "Yes, Master."

Dante squeezed him. "You're strong, Vergil. Mother would still love you. Father… he died, he has no right to judge you. He was more a failure than you are."

The old Vergil would have made some cutting remark about how Dante had no right to judge Father, when he was a fool who rejected Father's blood and legacy. Now Dante had inherited what he had denied. And Vergil had not.

But Vergil did not argue with Dante. Even though he clearly still believed that he was weak, was nothing… it made Dante's blood boil, to see his proud brother reduced to this.

"It'll all be okay, Vergil. So, if you can't spar with me, maybe with Trish?"

"If you want me to."

"Is it a bad idea?"

"I would think I was attacking Mother." Vergil swallowed. "They… they had me attack fake hers, and fake yous, and father's image, and… until I didn't even hesitate, and…"

"It's okay, Vergil. It won't happen again. You're safe. You'll get stronger, and I forgive you, and…" Would he always be repeating this? Would Vergil ever believe? Would they ever be… they would never be innocent again.


	13. Ares

_Disclaimer: I do not own Devil May Cry._

_- _

_Ares_

_-_

Dante was well aware that people kept an eye on him.

They'd kind of be stupid not to, he acknowledged even though it annoyed the hell out of him. After all, he was a one-man army. He could probably assassinate anyone he damn well chose to, up to and including the President.

If they'd started doing it when he was younger… but it took them until after Temen ni Gru to connect the dots. After all, they thought they were sure that Dante, and Vergil, had both died with their mother.

So he, and Lady, had to appear in court, and be asked some very (at the time) insulting questions.

Lady had spilled the beans about Vergil being there. And once they knew Vergil had been involved, they pieced together a lot of other stuff they had done.

Some of them had wanted to kill Dante, so he wouldn't do what Vergil had. They'd trusted Sparda, but after one of his sons turned traitor… well, they weren't human. What about the other one?

He'd rarely been that angry. Vergil had been psycho, yeah, Dante would say so, but Dante had the right to say so, Vergil was his brother. What did these guys understand about them?

In the end the experts had managed to make the politicians see sense. Because the bottom line was that Mundus had resurrected, and humanity needed all the help it could get. So Dante had been let off, even gotten an amnesty for… well, he didn't like killing humans, but he'd been a mercenary for quite a while, and they added up. The number (and they hadn't found out all of them) had been shocking, and since then he damn well only took special jobs. Period.

With the fame, he hadn't needed to take normal jobs.

Vergil hadn't gotten an amnesty. Vergil was charged at the UN courts or whatever with a whole bunch of murders, and as a traitor to humanity or whatever. Sentenced in absentia. As in, they wanted him. Burnt at the stake. And not revived.

Right now, everyone was partying over Mundus being defeated. The world was saved. Dante might, might have been able to get the ruling overturned if he'd delivered a penitent Vergil to them and testified about how Vergil had spared his life.

_Might. _That was the key there.

He really should have at least let people know he had Vergil. Let them see what bad shape he was in. He was a hero, now, so…

But Vergil, around strangers? Tossed in a jail cell? Guaranteed havoc. Going berserk and killing the guards… not to mention that Vergil would have been afraid, suffered.

It would have been the smart thing to do. The longer he waited, the more the gratitude would wear off. Here he was, aiding and abetting a criminal. And what did they need him for, now Mundus was defeated? Sure, he'd be back eventually, but politicians didn't think that long-term.

He should have turned him in. Got him declared insane (he had been)… he could have found a good lawyer. But he'd… that hadn't been an option. He'd needed to protect his brother, keep him secret and safe, at _home_.

So… the demons, Mundus' generals at least, knew he had Vergil. He'd used the sword nonstop after he got off Mallet, feeding it in preparation for the ritual.

He didn't want the humans finding out until… when? Preferably never. So when people came to visit him in his shop he had Trish keep him quiet in a back room.

He hadn't let Vergil outside wearing blue. If there were satellites or anything, they'd think it was the doppelganger, if they even were good enough to see the face.

Vergil was… getting better. He was able to spar against Beowulf, Nevan, the others, even if not with Dante or Trish. He lacked confidence, and that cost him victories, which make him even more convinced he wasn't strong. That wasn't good. And Vergil would be able to tell if someone was letting him win.

He needed to kill things.

Once Dante had performed the ritual Vergil had stayed as a human all the time. Tonight, though, Dante had told him to become a devil arm.

They were going hunting. He'd been waiting for a call like this: a nest of weak demons was just the ticket.

Vergil's sword, Vergil, had a couple of really neat tricks. Dante had thought Vergil had killed some demon and gotten their soul, was using their power to form the phantom blades but it turned out to be Vergil's own power. How he'd figured out how to do that Dante had absolutely no idea.

Dante had already mastered all the tricks with them Vergil had used against him, though he used a lot less finesse. Didn't need to show off your control with weak ones like this. Let them think you're dumb, let them think you're more suited to a club, that you don't have tricks up your sleeve. It was a trick that had served him for years.

Six of them left, looking like robots: these ones had animated computers instead of puppets. He didn't sense any more hanging around, waiting, watching, picking their moment to take form and try to kill him.

He held the sword out. "Vergil! I summon thee to slay mine enemies!" He hated the formal stuff, but it sounded right for Vergil. Old Vergil would have been insulted if he'd said, "Hey! You! Get that hot ass out here!" which was his usual request of Nevan. Probably would have impaled him in the groin.

A moment's hesitation, and the sword was out of his grasp: Vergil appeared, holding it: a lunge forward, a few graceful sweeps, and the demons were dead, the sword sheathed in the end of an unbroken movement.

He still had it. Dante grinned. "Way to go Vergil!"

Vergil didn't answer.

"Vergil?" Dante asked, walking up to Vergil, who was looking at where the demons had been hovering, back to Dante.

He saw Vergil start to whirl around, and instinct made him pull Yamato, which he had brought in case Vergil wanted it, because he knew an attack when one was about to hit him.

The swords clashed, and he looked into his brother's eyes and knew Vergil was trying to kill him.


	14. Athena

_Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry. _

_This concludes part II of the Angel Saga. Part III, Angel Wings, which will be the final part, will start sometime soon. _

_I'd like to thank the people who reviewed: without all the people who told me they really enjoyed Angel Blade and wanted me to write a sequel I wouldn't have. Reviewing matters. _

_- _

_Athena_

_-_

For the next five minutes Dante was too busy to think. There was a part of him that was deeply, incredibly hurt by the fact Vergil was attacking him. He'd thought that was over forever. There was another part that was going what the hell? What caused this?

But that was ignored in the flurry of strikes and parries, leaping, flipping, rolling, dodging, feinting, shooting…

The tricky part, that he never lost sight of, was that he had to damage Vergil enough he went back into the devil arm and not enough that Dante had to cast the ritual again. Unless he had some real good luck (bad luck for the world), it was going to take a couple years to gather enough red orbs to pay to revive Sparda. He didn't want to have to use them on Vergil all over again.

So no overkill. This was like fighting to capture, not kill, which was always something that irritated the hell out of Dante. It was a challenge, yeah, and sometimes it could be a fun one, like when he was sparring, but up against someone who was really trying to kill him (and Vergil was) it put him at a hell of a disadvantage and he hated that.

"Vergil!" Dante shouted. "Come on, snap out of it!" Because this was all wrong. Vergil was coming at him like the Terminator or something, not even bothering to deflect bullets or guard himself. None of his finesse, no tricky techniques… it was fighting Nelo Angelo at his most… no, this was even less like his brother than Nelo Angelo. Nelo Angelo hadn't been stupid. He'd had guts and honor, there had been a mind there. The mind of a perfect, loyal Dark Knight.

This was a killing machine. And it was kicking Dante's paranoia into high gear. But there wasn't any time for that now. He had to disable Vergil and then find out what the hell was going on.

Dante didn't quite dare to devil trigger, might have a power flare and do too much damage. Vergil wasn't devil triggering either. Nelo Angelo hadn't.

The lack of strategy and taunting reassured Dante on some level. Thinking back on it later, this was what showed him that Vergil was just being paranoid, that Mundus' conditioning had been broken when Dante broke Nelo Angelo. This wasn't Mundus's servant.

This was Vergil in a way Dante had never fought him. But he bet Vergil's tormenters had. All-out desperation. No taunting, no showing he was superior as he had Dante. Just kill it, now, before it gets you. As fast as possible.

Blinding speed, hits packed with desperate force, ignoring potential wounds. The fighting style of someone who knew they were going to be worn down eventually, but was sure as hell going to do as much damage as they could beforehand.

Vergil wasn't seeing him. Vergil was seeing Mundus' servants.

And if this allowed him to build up even a little of his confidence, get a little of his own bag. Dante didn't mind being Vergil's punching bag.

And he was. Dante realized he was losing.

He was in the position he put demons in most of the time. Here he was, up against someone with just as much raw power as Dante had, someone fighting like they welcomed death. Dante had to be cautious, Dante had training and experience. The best fighter in the world didn't fear the second best, he feared the worst because he didn't know what the bastard would do, and now Vergil was even crazier and more unpredictable, more hurt than Dante had dreamed of being.

Nelo Angelo beating him the first time had been luck, mainly. Once Dante had analyzed his style the other fights, even after he powered up for the last battle, were tough but manageable.

Sure, if he wanted to he could have killed Vergil. He was taking reckless chances, exploiting anything that looked even vaguely like an opening. If Dante had fought full force, he could have kept suckering him with feints, gotten him right where he wanted him, and hit him with killer blows.

He might, he realized as he was backed into a corner, have to do that.

He hated landing even the weak hits he was using. He didn't want to fight Vergil anymore. But Vergil wasn't seeing him. Nelo Angelo hadn't recognized him.

He'd recognized the… amulet, but Trish had the amulet now. What if… if he split his concentration to cast an illusion, he was going to get his ass handed to him on a platter. Good thing he was carrying gold orbs.

Good thing he'd carried the amulet long enough he knew it like the back of his hand.

And Vergil froze. Dropped his sword. Clutched his head in pain, as Nelo Angelo had. But he fell to the ground instead of zapping away.

"Vergil?" Dante headed over to him.

Vergil held up a hand to ward him off. "Don't come near me."

"Why?"

"I'll attack you."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm not sure." Vergil whimpered. "I thought… I thought I was free. But I attacked you. I hurt you. You let me hurt you."

Dante shrugged. "It wasn't all let. Even if I had been fighting for real you were kicking ass."

"I… You're weak, Dante. I'm weak. You won't kill me, even though I should be killed, and that means I can be used against you. I.. I just was used against you."

"No, that was a flashback, Vergil. Or something like it. Humans who have been through a lot have them. You weren't fighting me, you were fighting…"

"I was fighting like Mundus taught me to. What else did he… Dante, you have to get rid of me."

"Hell no."

"I attacked you once, I can attack you again! The longer you take care of me the stronger I'll become! I'll learn your new fighting styles!"

"Mundus couldn't kill me, you think you can?"

"I almost did. I've beaten you before, Dante. I… what if this was his plan? What if I'm a Trojan horse?" Vergil shuddered. "I have to go!"

"You're a bad one, then. You snapped out of it. All I had to do was cast an illusion. I can do it again." Dante shrugged.

But Vergil vanished. Dante stared at where he had been. "_Shit." _He ran outside, jumped from rooftop to rooftop, bending all his senses to the task. He couldn't find him.

To protect Dante, Vergil had left the only safety he had.


	15. III Angel Wings: Demeter

_Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry. _

_And here begins Angel Wings, part three of the Angel Saga, which was originally intended to have only one part… _

_-_

_Demeter_

_- _

He was hungry.

Vergil ignored it: he was used to far greater pain. Still, it was worse than it should have been after so long without any pain at all. He didn't have any money, Dante hadn't given any to him since he never left Dante's home.

That was good, he didn't deserve to take Dante's money. He'd already taken up too much of his time.

When he had been young, after Mother had been killed (now that was just one of the things that gave him nightmares), he had lived in the woods and hunted for his dinner at first. When he'd left the wilderness to try to achieve his vengeance and grow stronger, he had stolen, then taken jobs as an assassin, when that grew too easy as a bounty hunter. It combined business and training. He'd even killed some nests of demons, every one until one had offered to ally with him.

If only he'd turned down that offer. And the later one.

Now, he didn't want to steal. Humans deserved their things more than he did.

And he was sick of killing. He didn't even want to kill demons.

What good was a son of Sparda who didn't kill demons?

But he'd lost himself when he had killed. That was what had forced him to leave Dante.

He missed him like a human would miss an arm. But he couldn't go back. He didn't want to hurt Dante any more. But staying away from him was surely making him sad? If he wasn't glad he didn't have to waste time on Vergil anymore.

Vergil knew he wasn't worth being sad over.

The place where he had camped as a child was a ski resort now. No place to call home but Dante's side, and that couldn't ever be home.

He should find another place. Somewhere it would be hard for Dante to track him down. Hard for demons as well.

He didn't sleep either. No one to keep an eye out for him. He, unlike humans, only needed an hour a day, but he'd gone for months without sleep, that had been a minor torture but they'd used every one they could think of.

So he wandered.

When Dante had shown him his reflection in a mirror he'd been startled. He'd looked like he had when he was nineteen, when he fell, even though he'd grown to maturity in the underworld. He'd never mastered shapeshifting as Father had. But it seemed he was doing it by instinct, body returning to how it had been before the torment.

He thought of this when someone on the street he was aimlessly walking down called him miss, then apologized when Vergil answered her.

He'd looked at himself in a shop window. He'd known his hair was getting longer, Dante hadn't cut it: down past his shoulders now, almost to his armpits. What had surprised him was that he looked even younger.

He'd lost his big muscles, they'd become lean. He realized (and was too tired to be startled) that he looked like he had before he'd finally bulked up, as he had when he was sixteen, the first time he had fought Dante, slender as a young woman.

Well, as some women. People were fatter than they had been, he noticed and knew the person he had been before would have been disgusted. Now, he didn't care at all. He didn't care about anything.

He'd wondered idly if he would keep growing younger and younger until he disappeared. Was that his wish? He thought his body was showing the wish of his heart, first that he had never fallen into hell, and now that he had never fought Dante.

He wondered if he would become an eight year old, and it would be like Mother never died, but if he did that he would be weak. He knew as soon as he thought of it that he didn't want that.

Now, he looked weak but wasn't. Being underestimated sounded nice. Though his prideful self would have hated it.

When he sensed demons he ran into the mountains, and shivered in a cave for who knew how long. He didn't go back, he headed over the other side of the mountain, and knew that probably people had died because he hadn't killed the demons, because he was too weak.

He kept himself small so no one would be able to sense him.

This wasn't living, wandering like this. But Dante would be sad if he died… right? Dante was already sad because of him… but… the doubt, or was it hope, that Dante would care even though he was nothing kept him from finding some way to destroy even a devil arm.

He kept walking around, even at night, and one time some humans attacked him. They didn't scare him. At least he wasn't a complete coward. They were easy to defeat even without a weapon, he left them groaning on the ground in under a second, walking off without a backward glance.

The world had changed so much in… how long had it been? He found a calendar that said 2001. Ten years.

Almost as long as between when Mother died and when he fell.

When he got too tired, or too hungry, he found someplace that was still wilderness, gorged himself on what he caught and lay someplace until he fell asleep. Woke by nightmares, he tried to go as long as possible before doing it again.

Eventually, he found that wandering, surviving, wasn't enough. But what could he do?

He didn't want to be strong. Everything had happened because he wanted to be strong. Maybe he should search for some way to become a full human as he had once looked for a way to be a full demon?

That would be rejecting Sparda's legacy. He didn't want to dishonor it any more than he had.

He couldn't have Dante.

He realized he was in New York. It had been ten years. Would she still be here?

Dante wasn't the only one he had sinned against. And she would surely tell Dante he was still alive. If she was still alive.


	16. Nike

_Disclaimer: I do not own Devil May Cry. _

_-_

_Nike_

_-_

A visit to the right bar and acting the part of a scared teenager who had seen too much got him the address. He hadn't asked the name, but the bartender had volunteered it: Lady. He didn't know if it was her or not. If another demon hunter had taken over for her, maybe they would know where she went?

He found himself at a ratty old place in the middle of nowhere, clearly of the same breed of Dante's shop, though there was no sign. The door was open, and he tried to go through after knocking got no answer, but the hand he had put first to check for wards was stung by them.

He waited on the steps, watching the moon and wondering what he was going to say to someone he hadn't seen in a decade, had only seen twice in his life. Why was he here? She might try to kill him, or catch him and bring him back to Dante.

He hadn't stopped her father, he had aided and abetted him. Most of the victims of Vergil's crimes were dead.

A motorcycle roared up, and a woman dismounted. Shook her hair out from the helmet.

Her hair was longer, her face subtly older, but it was her. Mary. "Who are you?" she asked.

"Vergil," he said simply.

"Vergil?" She frowned. "Come into the light so I can see you."

He obeyed. Her eyes narrowed when she saw him, and she grimaced. "I'm going to kill him."

Vergil blinked. "For keeping me a secret."

"Hell yeah. He didn't even trust _me?"_ She looked outraged. "So did you run away, or did he want you to introduce yourself to me while he was a safe distance away, so he wouldn't get shot?"

"I ran away," he replied, ashamed.

"How old are you?" 

He blinked, surprised at the question. "I'm not sure."

"You're not… have I met your mother?"

"I don't think so."

"I thought he was a bachelor for a long time," she mused after a moment searching her memory. "Did he just pick some random woman?"

"No, Father loved her." Unwisely, he would have said once.

"Loved? Past tense?" Her eyes softened. "Was she killed by demons?"

"Yes." Surely Dante had told her this? He had liked her, but she hadn't liked him. Had Dante failed to win her over?

"Damn, kid. I'm sorry. I lost my mother too." She held out her arms. "Let Auntie Lady give you a hug, huh? Or are you too big for that?"

Gingerly, extremely confused, he stepped into her arms, wondering if it was a trap. Her reactions were not what he had expected. Only for a second, then she released him. "So why did you run away?"

"I didn't want to hurt him."

"Hurt him? He's indestructible." She laughed. "He beat Mundus, he's not going to be taken out by his own kid. What gave you that idea?"

His own… "Uh, you have the wrong idea." He backed up. "I'm not Dante's son."

She blinked. "…you're not? Are you a clone, then?"

"I'm Vergil. His brother."

Her eyes widened. "You're serious?"

He nodded, ashamed.

She hugged him. He jumped, startled. "Aren't you…"

"You came here wanting me to forgive you? I forgave you ages ago." She was grinning now. "You escaped Mundus? Dante's going to be so happy, no, he already knows, right?"

"I ran away from him," he told her again. "Dante rescued me from Mundus.

"Okay, I'm going to kill him for not telling me _that._ I though he'd had a secret kid. You look… younger. Thinner. Were you starved."

"Yes, but not just that." He tried to regain his composure, make this follow the script that had been torn to shreds. "It doesn't matter."

"It's over. Dante won't let anything happen to you… he's got to be going nuts. I'd better call him and tell him you're here." She headed inside.

"No!" he blocked her way. "Not until I'm gone."

"Why not?"

"I'm… I attacked him. I'm afraid Mundus might have programmed me to be an assassin. I don't want to hurt him anymore." He shook his head.

She backed off. "Okay."

"Why do you trust me?" he asked, confused. "I allied with Arkham, I did nothing to stop him killing your mother."

"Dante explained what you were trying to do. I mean, saving the world…" She shrugged. "That's a pretty good reason. And you were the one who stabbed him and left him there, right? So… and I saw you humiliated by my father and you didn't kill me. You weren't the bastard you seemed. So, I've been keeping an ear out for you for Dante." She grinned. "He rescued you when he beat Mundus, right?"

"Yes." He nodded. He had expected… her to attack him, him to have to flee, he had… wanted her to hate him. Not being hated felt wrong. Dante wasn't angry, even though he should be: he had wanted someone to hate him like he deserved to be hated. "Mundus used me to attack him."

"Bastard." Her saying that reminded Vergil of when Arkham's treachery was revealed. He'd thought he was in control until then. That was when he should have realized he'd chosen the wrong path, but no: he'd avoided Dante by rolling into the crevice instead of allying with him. "And you're worried it will happen again?"

"Yes," he said, ashamed.

"Why don't you go to Vie du Marli?"

"What?" The island of the other half-breeds? He'd been there once, but was disgusted by how they guarded and served the humans: they had been much weaker than him.

"They should know about… what devils can do. And they won't turn you in."

There was… someone who could help him? He didn't have to stay away from Dante until he was killed?

He had to go now! "Thank you!" And he ran into the night.

When the hope lit his face and he grinned, in the sudden enthusiasm, Lady saw his kinship with Dante.

He hadn't attacked her. She had better call Dante right away, in case he had been a fake.

She hoped he hadn't been, for Dante's sake.


	17. Helios

_Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry._

_-_

_Helios_

_-_

Just like with Arkham's daughter, he didn't find what he expected her. He'd tried to break Sparda's seal and these were the descendants of people who had fought Mundus. He'd expected hate, he'd maybe even been hoping they would kill him.

He'd expected fierce warriors with the blood of the gods, men like he had tried to be, but unashamed of the taint of human blood.

He found an old woman whose heir was a young girl. For the guardian tribe, Mundus' war had never ended. Sorcerers, Mundus' agents trying to destroy humanity's defenders… he saw few men, and most of them were young.

They treated him with the utmost respect, he had to beg them to not call him Son of Sparda: he didn't deserve the title. That was Dante, now.

Test after test, the old woman looking through older and older writings, and nothing. There had been a taint, he had been controlled, but Dante defeating him seemed to have shattered everything.

Seemed to have.

Matier insisted he sleep, and he couldn't quite refuse her, and after his screams had woke her she gave him a potion that stopped his dreams. But he knew what they would have been.

Dante dying, his shining soul rising from his body to Vergil's arms. Vergil kneeling before Mundus, offering it to his once and future lord and master, the armor cloaking him again.

It was on the seventh spell, the first one that Matier had to learn before casting it, that the red-haired heiress was included in the casting, biting her lip and looking nervous. He glanced at her. What did she have to worry about? A spell some dead sorcerer had thrown?

_She_ still had her mother. She had been taught, sheltered. She protected. She was worthy of her blood, the blood of the gods as they called it here. He understood how Dante had hated Sparda's noble blood now.

She glanced at him, he noticed now he was paying attention. Sympathy, pain… he wasn't good at reading people. A far less skilled actor than Arkham would have managed to trick him. The old Vergil would have glared back. Now, he didn't have the right to.

He knew it was impossible to prove a negative. They could be finding nothing because there was nothing there, or because it was too well hidden. After all, the guardian clan's lore was two millennia out of date. Surely there had been advances in spells since then.

Two months after he arrived, they found something. But it wasn't in him.

The spell was searching for triggers, stimuli that would trigger behavior, and it seemed Lucia had an off switch.

They had been standing there for almost half an hour, lights swirling around them, and he noticed the sound of her heart had stopped. She breathed no more. He'd opened an eye to look at her: he hadn't felt a death. Was she practicing deep meditation? This was a good time for it.

Matier noticed he was looking at her daughter and examined the girl herself, worry soon replaced by horrified comprehension.

He'd stood there, not knowing what to do, as Matier pinched and prodded her beloved daughter: no response. Finally, she closed her eyes and thought. "Vergil?"

"Yes?"

"Would you please do an old woman a favor?"

"What?" He owed her, but he was wise enough now to look before he leaped.

"Please, attack me."

"What?" Was this some trick or test? She was Mundus' enemy, the leader of the clan.

"Lucia… I cannot think what else will wake her. She was made to protect, so…"

"Made?"

"By the sorcerer Arius. I found her, and she became my daughter. I cast spells then, but failed to find this."

"There were other control spells on her?" So these spells were real and not just made up to soothe him and make him go home to Dante? They worked?

"Yes, many. But she fought them: that may be why she was thrown away." The old woman nodded. "As a protector… I think what she loves being threatened may wake her when nothing else would."

Vergil punched her, the blow calculated so his fist stopped just touching her face.

"No, it must be real," Matier commanded when Lucia failed to react.

Vergil remembered how he had been able to stop himself from killing Dante, even when the spells were at their strongest. The next punch sent her across the room.

"Lucia! Help me!"

He could feel something from her, a burst of alarm, and kicked Matier through her field of vision onto a couch, looking as menacing as he could like this.

A sharp sound, and Lucia was at Matier's side, breathing hard. "Matier!"

"I am all right, child." Matier hugged her daughter.

"I am sorry I scared you." Her eyes were downcast, deeply ashamed.

"It is my fault."

Vergil suddenly felt horrible. Was that all he was good for? Hurting? He had no right to be here. He shouldn't be so envious of Lucia: she, at least, had her family. He shrugged it off when she thanked him, worship in her eyes. He missed Dante more than ever, seeing their closeness. They weren't even related, and they were together.

He stayed until a week passed and they could find no more spells. Then he left, unable to stand it any longer.

He knew intellectually that he was clean, free. Dante had freed him, Dante had saved him.

But he felt dirty. He couldn't bring himself to go back, even though he missed Dante and Dante would be so glad to see him. Unless he was angry… he couldn't bear Dante being angry.

He would just be a burden to Dante, a potential threat. He couldn't even fight demons. He didn't deserve Dante. He never would.

It wasn't Mundus. It was him. He was the one that had hurt Dante. He had known exactly what he was doing, done it of his own free will. He was the monster Dante had feared.

He didn't even have the right to die. That would waste Dante's hard work. Not that it wasn't already wasted on him.


	18. Pandora

_Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry. _

_The writer of the hundredth review was tenamanda1988, who therefore wins a gift-fic. I'll be writing it as soon as I get her request. _

…_now that I think about it, I really should use the power of these author's notes for evil. _

_Okay, then, there is no good fic based on the DMC1 comics! There's a really interesting portrayal of Vergil in there, and at one point he knocks Dante out. If you own the comics, write fic! I would , but I'm depressed and have a novel to edit. If you don't own the comics, buy them: they're AU and corny, but the art's gorgeous. They were made by Dreamwave and never finished because the company went bankrupt. Look 'em up on Ebay. _

_-_

_Pandora_

_-_

He was in Alaska when it happened. He liked it there: it was beautiful, there was plenty of game, and with so few humans there were few demons to avoid. No reason for Dante to be called here.

Then one day when he was trying to meditate seven demons dropped down out of the sky in a circle around him. In a flash, he was on his feet.

Fight or flight? Indecision paralyzed him. No, it was terror. If he ran, they would track him down, but he didn't have a weapon. He'd let himself get especially weak once, and his devil arm had been reabsorbed into his body.

Six of them looked ridiculous, but the seventh… when it spoke, he knew he was doomed. Only the powerful ones could talk. "We have found you, traitor's son," it hissed, circling him. He turned, but the others circled with it, evenly spaced around him, and he couldn't keep them all in view at once.

The high-level demon that had spoken looked vaguely humanoid, but its feet and hands were webbed and the head looked like that of a seahorse: it was a very, very pale blue speckled with black scales.

"Master Mundus sent us to reclaim you. He allowed you to 'escape,'" the voice made a mockery of the word, "so that you could tell us the other one's secrets."

"Well, than you might as well go home without me. I don't know any secrets."

"Then you must be punished for failing your master!" The demon sprang.

Vergil was twenty feet away when he landed.

He'd been avoiding demons for years now. He hadn't fought a real fight since he had left Dante. He was terribly out of practice.

He didn't have any devil arms, or even devil artifacts to use to devil trigger. He could still use the displacement technique and summon phantom swords.

With no blue orbs, he could withstand several hits from the weak ones, but only a few from the stronger demon.

Used to being the stronger, he was now too weak to win in a fair fight. So, he realized, his only option was to mimic humans, the technique he had despised Dante for using.

Stay out of reach and shoot them instead of closing in and using a weapon he didn't have. He would be using his phantom blades instead of bullets, but the principle was the same.

He displaced randomly, only staying in one spot enough to pick a target and summon swords.

The demon kept trying to leap at him, and grew enraged, yelling insults. Vergil didn't respond, even though they would have enraged his younger self. They were true, after all. He was a coward who didn't stand and fight like a demon.

He lost track of time: the weaker demons died relatively quickly but the leader was incredibly quick. The first few times Vergil tried to target him he avoided all the swords easily, but Vergil had refused to panic and worked on improving his aim by taking out the lesser demons.

The demon's ability was to shoot water from its mouth. It looked stronger than a fire hose: when the stream hit a tree it fell. Vergil had to stay out of the way, but it could whip its head around incredibly fast, on top of its rapid jumps.

Vergil was hit by the edge of the spray once, and knew that his arm would be broken if he was a human.

By the end of the battle, he was hitting the demon with two swords out of each batch.

Finally, the demon toppled over, a greenish-black light floating out of it towards Vergil. He held out his arm and a trident appeared in his hand.

He looked around at the devastated clearing and smiled.

He'd done it.

Out of practice, no devil arm, no magical items of any sort, hungry, tired, terrified, and he'd done it, defeated a high-level demon Mundus had sent to reclaim him. For an instant, he felt like the old Vergil.

Then it hit him.

Mundus wasn't sealed. Mundus was still active. Mundus wanted him back. Mundus had sent demons. He would send more demons. They would find him again.

Alone, without Dante's protection… He had a devil arm now, that was good, but Mundus would know he had it, and send someone whose abilities could counter it.

He couldn't be captured. He would be sent against Dante again, and if Dante held back because he knew it was Vergil, he might lose. This time, he would be conditioned and enchanted so well that nothing could break him free.

He didn't think he knew anything valuable to Mundus: he had been amazed at Dante's strength and hadn't seen his weaknesses.

Except Vergil, Vergil was his weakness.

He looked at his new devil arm.

He could… go far away from here, maybe swim out into the ocean. Somewhere deep.

It was the coward's way out, but… if his devil arm was lost he couldn't be used against Dante. And he wouldn't have to…. Remember what he had done, what had been done to him… would he sleep, like Father did in his sword? Would he dream of what might have been, Father raising them, fighting side-by-side with Dante, being the proud, strong warrior he had wanted to be…

But, they had found him. What if he was found? Devil arms tried to kill those who picked them up, but…

Dante would be sad. He didn't want Dante to know he had only rescued him because Mundus had allowed it.

If Mundus was still active… Dante was so much stronger now, but… he'd defeated this demon. He could help Dante.

He could.

He had to at least _warn_ Dante, right? And Dante could defeat him, make him a devil arm again. Vergil could help his brother that way.

He wanted to see Dante again.

He would see Dante again. Even if he knew that, just like every time they had met since their mother's death, he would only end up hurting him.


	19. Hermes

_Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry. _

_Using The Power Of The Author's Notes For Evil Part II: _

_Someone had to teach Lady how to fight like that. She knows, from the manga, that Dante kills demons and where to find him. So, what if she'd gone to him to ask him to teach her? Someone needs to write a D/L fic with that plot. Hop to it!_

_-_

_Hermes_

_-_

It took him longer to get there than he had thought. He knew Devil May Cry existed, but only vaguely where it was: there had been a sign saying "Welcome to Metropolis" that he had passed, but he had stuck to back roads. At first the only option had seemed to be retracing his steps, a prospect that made him wince, but then he had gone to a library to look at maps: he should be able to recognize the shapes of the streets (and he knew some names, at least) once he had found the right city. But he didn't even know what state to look in. The librarian who led him to the maps noticed his daunted look and when he explained his problem led him to an amazingly small computer and demonstrated something called 'Google Earth.'

He was amazed: how on earth were the humans able to cover up demonic activity with satellites like this in normal people's hands? They couldn't _all _be part of the conspiracy. Had they given up on the cover up? But the librarian still looked at him as though he was insane when he raised the idea of demons.

He shouldn't be glad humans were still deluded, but it was one thing that hadn't changed, at least.

He found where he was sure Devil May Cry must be, but it looked like a warehouse in the block of other warehouses. He was even able to get directions from here on the computer. Amazing.

The librarian most likely thought him a crazy simpleton, or one of the humans who used drugs to addle already inferior brains… no, he shouldn't think that. He was the one stupid enough to believe Arkham and throw himself into Mundus' hands, after all.

He set out, and now that he was thinking, had a plan, it occurred to him that Dante must already know Mundus was active. Perhaps he had known all along his defeat wasn't permanent and had simply been lying to Vergil to keep him from living in fear of Dante being defeated and Vergil being recaptured.

And then he realized that if he had been free for so long those demons finding him must have been luck. He had avoided places demons frequented, like inner cities and places where there were houses that were far apart from each other within driving range of cities, where cults practiced away from prying eyes. He'd also avoided suburbs. He loathed suburbs.

Where Dante lived and hunted… would not be a place there were few demons. They would be watching him. Watching to see if Vergil came back. He might be ambushed before he came anywhere near Dante.

Well, there was a solution to that. He sat gracefully under a tree (so he couldn't be seen by flying demons), and called.

Once they had been able to speak to each other along this link, but in the years apart that skill had rusted. If they knew the other lived, they might have traveled and kept calling until the other heard, but Dante hadn't even known Vergil had ever existed, and by the time Vergil knew Dante had become a potential rival, a threat, to him. He hadn't wanted to alert the other to his presence.

Once he'd summoned Temen ni Gru, he'd wanted Dante to come to him. Vergil had thought perhaps pretending to be a human had deafened Dante completely, but he showed up.

When Dante had been caring for Vergil, Vergil had _wanted_ him and he'd come running. Once he'd left, he'd reluctantly ignored Dante's calls. He'd had to.

Now that he had called, he was having second thoughts. Like maybe he should have gotten a haircut first, stolen some decent clothes… he was clean, at least. He'd gone in a high school for the first time in his life because he remembered there were showers in them a few months ago.

A lightning bolt came down out of a clear sky and he sprang to his feet, ready to summon swords and brandishing his new devil arm. Then he felt Dante calling him from nearby in that direction and composed himself, heading that way.

Dante.

Trish was with him, but he ignored her.

Mundus was still out there, sending high-ranking demons through to hunt him, and for the first time in… years, he felt safe. He bowed, dismissing the weapon. "Dante."

"Vergil." Dante stopped a small distance away. "So,where have you been?" Trying to keep it light, when he'd clearly been going out of his mind from the look that flashed across his face.

"Here and there. I saw Arkham's… Lady. And went to Vie du Marli."

"Lady told me. Matier didn't." Dante grimaced at the second, but didn't seem more than a little surprised. "Vergil, we've got a problem."

"Yes, Mundus is still active." Dante already knew.

"Yeah. He kidnapped Trish." Dante pointed his thumb at her. "I got her back. And some autographs thrown in."

Autographs? But Dante was clearly trying to give the impression he was not desperate to know if Vergil had been all right. "He attacked me as well."

"Is that where you got the new toy?"

Toy? Vergil took it out. "Yes."

Now that he was around Dante again, he seemed to be falling into old habits. Cold logic, coolness towards him… he didn't want to resent him for being Father's true heir. Didn't want to belittle him by saying his victory wasn't good enough when _he_ had been the one to defeat Mundus.

He wasn't good at what he had called mushy stuff as a child, but "I missed you."

"I know why you left."

"Matier seems to think it's safe for me to be here. And I want to help you." Also, he knew, if Dante thought Vergil was in danger, despite everything Vergil had done to him, this abandonment simply the most recent, Dante would search for him desperately. And that would divide Dante's attention when he needed to be focusing on preparing for Mundus' next move.

And that was a perfectly cool and logical reason for fleeing to the safety of his brother.

No, for… doing what he could to help his brother. Even if he was the weak one who had lost.


	20. Hestia

_Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry. _

_Using The Power Of The Author's Notes For Evil Part III: _

_Nevan. There is not enough Nevan fic. She's incredibly cool. Worship her. Write, and post at the lj group dantexnevan. _

_-_

_Hestia_

_-_

The lightening bolt he'd seen earlier had been Trish, she had the power to turn into energy to travel, and could bring along passengers.

Dante's home seemed mostly unchanged.

His room was still there. Kept clean, with the gifts Dante had given him on the shelves.

It felt like being welcomed home. Even though he had abandoned Dante yet again, Dante was glad to see him, glad he was alive.

He felt, he knew he didn't deserve it.

Dante gave him Yamato. He'd missed it. The sword he had inherited from Father, if only he had been content with it. But no, if he hadn't done it, Dante wouldn't have had the Sparda and been able to defeat Mundus. What he'd done wrong was to jump into hell, into Mundus' hands.

The demon world had never been his home, he had been born here. This was where Father had chosen to live. Vergil could understand why he'd found it preferable.

"Care to let me in on the joke?" Dante asked.

Vergil realized his lips had twisted wryly into a parody of a smile. "It's nothing, Dante."

"Oh." Dante was disappointed his overture had been rejected, Vergil realized. He should try to talk to him, he owed his brother that much.

"What has happened since I left?" Vergil asked.

"Not much. Killed demons, got paid, partied." Dante shrugged. "You?"

"I saw Arkham's daughter, went to the island to see of they could undo what Mundus did to me, wandered." Vergil didn't shrug.

"Oh."

Vergil realized he had already told Dante this, and tried to think of something to say. "Computers have become very advanced."

"Yeah, I know. I'm going to have to get one one of these days. It'll be something to do while I'm sitting at my desk waiting for calls. They have games and stuff. And there's supposed to be a lot of porn online." In Dante's smile at that Vergil saw the ghost of Dante's nineteen-year-old self, who'd offended people just for the attention.

Vergil noticed there was a poster of a different girl on the wall. "I suppose there is." Humans, no self-control… but had Vergil _really_ had self-control when everything he had done was in pursuit of what he craved, and damn the world and those who might suffer?

Like Dante.

What could he say next? He wasn't going to talk about porn, of all things. "They certainly make things easier." He used to despise human inventions that made things easy. Like guns.

"Learning how to use them's the hard part, they say." Dante shrugged. "How tough can it be?"

So this was small talk. He hated it already, saying unimportant things… but he wanted to _talk_, Dante liked such things, and he owed Dante.

Maybe he should say the hard things. "I wish I hadn't had to go."

"You didn't have to. The only reason I didn't kick your ass right away that time was because I didn't want to have to revive you again. If it looked like you stood a chance I'd take you out damn quick."

"I didn't want to make you have to do that."

"Sure, like wondering if Mundus had taken you again was any better." It had been worse.

"I'm sorry," Vergil said quietly. "I kept myself safe, and when I knew there was danger I came back here."

"Thanks for doing that. This is your home now, Vergil," Dante gestured around at the messy office. "We're family. I missed you, you know that?"

"You told me that before, while I was still…" While he was still almost mindless, Dante had held him, said soothing things he didn't understand at the time but now did. He almost didn't believe them.

He'd tried to make Dante hate him. That would have made it easier to kill him, take his soul and his power. Yet somehow he'd never done it, even letting Arkham call him off instead of ending it there, above the tower, when he'd known he would soon need every ounce of power he could gain to fight Mundus.

When he'd found Dante again, he'd been wasting the power Vergil craved for his vengeance. He'd tried to hate him.

But in the end, they'd worked seamlessly against a common foe.

In the end, all Mundus' spells and demon instincts that bound him in servitude to Mundus couldn't make Vergil kill Dante.

He was proud of that, the proudest thing he'd ever done in his life.

The rebellion against Mundus that was the only reason he was worthy to be Sparda's son.

"Dante, thank you."

Dante shrugged. "You used to be a bastard, but you were always my brother, Vergil. I couldn't let Mundus keep you. And I won't let him get his filthy tentacles on you ever again."

"Thank you." He bowed his head briefly. "Dante, I'm sorry."

"You just said that."

"I'm sorry for everything."

"Hey, we were both teenagers, and we were fucked in the head. Absolutely nuts. No court in the world…" But the world courts had held Vergil responsible. "Not your fault, Vergil."

He wanted to say he had known what he was doing, but looking back, he realized what an utter fool he had been.

He should have shared his plans with Dante, they should have been allies, they should have been brothers. Let Dante's humanity temper his demon side, let Dante teach him to care for humanity as Vergil had tried to get Dante to accept his demon side.

But no, he had wanted to be the lone dark knight, the hero his father had been, strong, alone: without equal and needing no one. The perfect warrior, the warrior that Dante had hated because all his strength hadn't allowed him to come home that night. Hadn't kept his wife alive.

If he had that strength, he could get revenge. If he had that strength, he could with their respect and love beyond the grave.

He'd envied Dante, Eva's favorite, and wanted to eclipse him.

When what their parents must have wanted was for them to be together, and happy.

Mother had always been perceptive. Had she seen that Dante was the one who had what it took?

And Dante, miraculously, didn't hate him. Dante was welcoming him home.

Home.


	21. Heracles

_Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry. _

_This is the end of the _Angel Trilogy_ and the last fanfic I will post until at least the end of November, as I am doing NaNoWriMo. Well, if things to well there might be one or two oneshots (I am amenable to bribery, by the way)._

_I was thinking about it, and I've decided there's a whole lot more I can do with this story. I was planning on ending it on a semi-cliffie like the other parts and just being evil and never continuing, but I think I may make this the _Angel Series. _What do you think?_

_Oh, and Heracles is the more correct spelling of Hercules. He was named after the goddess Hera in hopes she wouldn't kill him for being proof her husband had cheated on her. Again._

_I'm very sorry this is so late. _

_-_

_Heracles_

_-_

Vergil sat at the desk, waiting for Dante and Trish to get back. Things were heating up: he remembered Trish, who was still in-training, always going out with Dante. Now, they went out separately, so that someone would be here if another person called with an emergency.

Night had fallen two hours ago, just after Vergil woke up from his first sound sleep in ages. Here, where Dante was, was safe.

Well, if he wasn't safe here, he wasn't safe anywhere, but that way lay madness.

Mundus was still out there, and Dante and Trish had both left. Trish had gone out first, Dante staying with him. Vergil had been grateful: they'd done it that way before, Dante watching over him as much as possible, but… though he was still uncomfortable in his brother's presence.

He'd _missed_ him.

Now Dante was gone. Vergil had overheard the conversation, and it sounded very bad.

Vergil watched the phone, ready to answer it if anyone called. Dante had told him they needed to keep Mundus guessing where he was, to keep that he was here a secret. No going out on missions, they'd smuggled him inside the building.

The phone rang, and Vergil answered.

It was a trap.

A mother, her children under attack, husband already killed… it was too much like that night. First Trish, then Dante… the only one left to answer was him.

The person he had been before the tower would have coldly calculated that this was an attempt to see if here was here, and if he was capture him and bring him back to Mundus. The person he had been when he worked with Arkham would have hung up the phone on the whimpers and not told Dante about the call.

But he wasn't that person anymore. That pride… Mundus had broken it. He was nothing, tainted, a failure, those humans were worth more than him.

No, Dante cared for him more than for some random humans, Dante had always been foolish and emotional. But Dante wouldn't want to trade human lives for their lives. Vergil would have spared him the choice.

But he didn't want to be the sort of person who could ignore people, just let them die because he was a selfish coward.

He'd wanted to be like Father once. Dante had told the truth when he said Vergil would never be like Father.

But… Vergil didn't want to disgrace his name anymore.

Foolish Dante, not sealing him in.

No, Vergil was always and ever the foolish one.

There were only two demons, ones that looked like Cyclops yeti, one horn and purple-furred. They were eating the corpse of the father in front of the door to the room he heard the family hiding in. Saving them for later.

One slice with Yamato was all it took: he displaced, giving them no warning. He displaced away again immediately, kept moving.

Nothing attacked.

He could feel minor demons in the air, and the spirits of the one he had just killed. They whispered his name.

So. Mundus would soon know he was here.

He went back to Devil May Cry. Dante would be anxious if he came back and found him gone. Though the real reason was that he was afraid now. More afraid.

They followed him, joined by others, until he reached the wards. None of them made bodies. It was obviously just to unnerve him at no risk to themselves, he didn't have any technique that would hurt the ones without bodies. They were no real threat.

He hid his shivers.

When Dante came back, Vergil thought, sitting on the desk so it was between him and the door, he would have to tell Dante what he had done. He had stupidly blown his cover even when Dante had told him not to. He should have… claimed one of Dante's devil arms and sent it? No, he had no right to them. Not even to Beowulf. Even Yamato was rightfully Dante's, and Yamato was sealed and couldn't take human form.

Still, there must have been some other option. He should have thought of it.

While the demons had finished their meal and ripped the mother away from her children. She was the next biggest.

He had disobeyed Dante. What if this was the final straw? Vergil had done so many horrible things, and if Dante couldn't trust him, would he throw him out? Kill him and take him as a devil arm?

It would be… nice to sleep like that. To help Dante, to not cause Dante pain, to not have to think about his guilt, to think at all. Peace.

But being a devil arm was an honor. Why would Dante ever use him? He had used him on Mallet, but that must have been the joy of rediscovery. Dante had been so happy to find him, even though Vergil had…

When Dante came back, Vergil took a deep breath and told him he had disobeyed, and Mundus knew now.

Dante had to pry the details out of Vergil, who hung his head.

Finally Dante smiled, shrugged it off. "They would have found out anyway. Don't worry about it."

Vergil dared glance up at him and saw happiness, approval.

Dante had no reason to approve of him. He hadn't done it because of… he didn't know why he had done it. While he traveled, he had avoided demons instead of killing them when he sensed him. Surely people were dead because of his inaction.

He'd killed people. He'd hurt Dante.

Making up for it was an impossible labor.

But… but he'd wanted to at least, at least try.

He smiled at the undeserved approval and Dante hugged him. He was stiff at first then relaxed into it.

He'd been hugged when they were children, and before he'd remembered. He wished he'd never remembered.

But… if he never had, then he would have always been a burden. He wanted to help Dante, do what he could to make up for everything. Even if it would never be enough, he would. He had to.


	22. IV Angel Harp: Hephaestus

_Disclaimer: I do not own Devil May Cry and I make no money from this_

_So, it looks like the _Angel Series _now will in fact be continued. The new 'maximum' is seven parts. This part is called _Angel Harp, _and will be seven chapters like the parts usually are. The other three will be _Halo, War, _and_ Blessings.

-

_Hephaestus _

-

One of the changes to Devil May Cry that had happened after Vergil left was the addition of a statue of the God of Time, which apparently Dante had hacked from its pedestal and hauled through a portal before finishing the mission, then had to bring in to one of the warehouses by opening up one of the doors trucks had used to be loaded via after he'd sealed them when he'd moved in. "It seems like I'm always working on this place." Dante shook his head. "And that's not even including repairs. One time the right wing got blown up. I had to bring in a contractor from out of town and pay for life insurance on all of his people, not to mention standing guard on them all day. That was before you guys got here," he told Trish and Vergil.

"A man's home is his castle." Trish shrugged, smiling slightly at some inside joke.

Vergil remembered their father's castle, and the way it had fit Father like a glove. He'd hated leaving it to travel as much as Dante loved to see new places. He also remembered how he'd let Arkham send demons to Dante's shop. His home, his nest. He'd guessed that Arkham would destroy it, to anger Dante enough to make him rush to the tower.

He'd wanted Dante to lose his home, his place of safety, his nest. Foolish Dante, thinking that anywhere was safe while Mundus still lived, anywhere was home except where Father had lived.

Vergil had traveled, found his safety in quickness, in being a moving target.

Until he'd thrown himself into the enemy's domain, Mundus' home ground.

"Anyway, having this here means I won't have to do the ritual out in the middle of nowhere like I did for you, Vergil." Dante patted the wall on the side of the statue: actually touching it would have sent his spirit to bargain with the God, and there wasn't anything Dante wanted right this instant.

"So we've got enough orbs?" Trish raised her eyebrow. "I thought we still needed another few hundred thousand?"

"No, the reason it took so much for Vergil was because we also had to break the spells Mundus put on him first. There's only one spell on his sword, the one Arkham used to control, well, fail to control, his power now that the amulets are together and the seal's broken."

"What are you talking about?" Vergil said carefully. He instantly had dismissed the idea that they were talking about what it _sounded_ like they were talking about. He had once hoped that that would happen, but now he knew things as good as that didn't happen.

"Reviving Pops. We'll see if I've got enough orbs stored to do it." Dante grinned. "Can I have the sword, Trish?"

"You promised I could have Alastor," she reminded him, taking the mammoth sword from her back.

"I know, I know: he likes you, maybe this will make him shut up about me using Rebellion. Alastor's powerful and all, but Rebellion's always been my main sword." Dante held the sword of flesh and bone that Vergil knew was their Father's swords true form up to the statue and then stopped moving, in the trance of the statue.

A second later, Dante moved again, putting the sword on the ground, looking at it, tapping his foot and cursing. "This better work! Fifteen thousand six hundred and fifty-two of the bloody things left! I haven't been that low on orbs since I was twenty-one! Maybe I should have waited a bit, in case there's something I need to buy in a hurry."

The sword was, obligingly, glowing red, shading quickly to purple.

"Dante, we've got spares of the spares." Trish told him, watching the sword, clearly trying to downplay the seriousness of the moment, though her own tension shone through..

He raised an eyebrow at her. "You're the one who's always talking about how we're low on money."

Vergil barely paid attention, focused on the familiar aura the sword gave off, barely remembering to breathe. Father… He wanted that feeling of safety, but after all he had done, what if Father hated him?

"That's money, the folding green stuff you blow on home improvements and new custom-built motorcycles, not the hard red st-AAAH!-gurgle..." As Trish slammed to the ground, her hands were already trying to pull claws away from her throat.

"Damn!" Dante tried to pull the thing away from her as Vergil stared.

It looked like Father, but Father had been huge. Of course, Vergil had been a child then, but still, Father's demon form had towered over Mother even more than his human form had. He definitely hadn't been about two feet tall.

Dante also wouldn't have been able to separate him from Trish as easy as he did the mini-devil. "Calm down, Pops!"

Wings beat frantically as the growling devil, eyes glowing red and claws reaching out struggled to get away from Dante and renew its attack on Trish. It hissed angrily. Vergil translated. "He's saying she's a fake made by his enemy, not his true mate, and he wants us away from her so she won't hurt us. His grammar is… he sounds like as much of a child as he looks."

Trish looked utterly devastated as she pulled back from Sparda: she had understood without needing Vergil's translation. Vergil realized that Trish, invited to be part of the family by Dante, must have been as afraid of rejection by Sparda as Vergil was.

Sparda had said he wantedher away from _both_ his nestlings, so… but would Sparda say the same when he wasn't like this? Vergil remembered how out of his mind he had been at the beginning.

"Father, nestlings are safe, fake is friend," Dante hissed and growled, and Vergil blushed realizing what a fool he had been. Of course Dante had learned the demonic tongues by now. Dante wasn't his heritage-rejecting little brother anymore.

Dante was the true son of the Father he, not Vergil, had restored.


	23. Aphrodite

_Disclaimer: I don't own it, no profit made. If anything, this is costing me valuable time and energy. _

_-_

_Aphrodite_

_-_

They were at the castle now, the place that had always been home to Vergil except when he had been mindless enough to think Hell was, in their parents' room. He had vague memories (or perhaps they were only fabrications of his mind conjured up by family photos and Mother's stories: Dante had no memories of Father at all) of lying between Father and Mother in the big bed, curled up around Dante. He had more concrete memories of taking Dante here after they'd had bad dreams: he'd been just as scared as Dante, but he'd had to be brave for Dante because he was the big brother.

Now Dante was the stronger one, the braver one, the one who sheltered him. Vergil could survive on his own, but perhaps he could not forever. Mundus was still out there.

He'd realized why Dante hadn't told him about resurrecting Father until he was about to do it. Dante hadn't wanted him to get his hopes up, to start thinking about his unworthiness.

Father, to him, had always been his goal. The protector of the family, of humanity, the legendary strongest dark knight. The one the humans idolized when he knew that they didn't accept him or Dante. He'd wanted to _make_ them accept him, not just that, make them understand that he was _better _than them, not no better than a beast, a mere demon.

Father, now… was this how he had been when Dante first freed him? He remembered only confusion, fear, but knowledge that Dante was… safe? Important?

Dante had told Trish to get out of sight and they'd tried to calm Sparda down, but he'd kept trying to get to the door: all of Devil May Cry carried Trish's scent, even rooms she was rarely in: she'd been there for years.

The castle was the next-safest spot: the wards here had held during its long abandonment. Here, Sparda was calmer, Dante had been able to let him go.

Vergil watched his father, who looked more like a nestling than Vergil did despite his millennia, fly around and examine things. He could feel weakly the emotions of curiosity, frustration, recognition. Sparda knew this place, but didn't understand why, but he did understand that something was missing, and kept looking under the bed or on top of the bed canopy for it.

For her.

He didn't leave the room and he didn't fly away long: he'd come back and touch Dante and Vergil to reassure himself that the nestlings were alright and to reassure them that he was here, then he would fly again. Sometimes he wobbled, tired and weak, but he kept looking.

He always ended up at the center of the bed, sniffing it and poking at it: Vergil could tell he was calling, the scent (old) was strongest there.

They'd tried to speak to him but he didn't seem to understand human languages, and his thoughts were scattered, attention-span as short as that of the child he seemed to be about everything but keeping the evil fake away from the nestlings.

And looking for the precious thing. Vergil was certain what that thing was despite only catching whispers of Sparda's confused thoughts of it (match, thing that belonged with him and nestlings, bright small thing but strong thing), and didn't want to see Sparda's reaction when he realized she was gone forever.

Dante was taking something from under his coat, and Vergil's eyes widened. The amulet? But Trish had it!

Sparda's gift to their mother, her gift to them, the amulet that unsealed hell, that had sealed Sparda's power. Was Dante hoping that giving it to Sparda would make him stronger, restore his mind more quickly?

_Father? _Vergil heard Dante say.

The mottled brown insect, horns tiny little nubs and wings buzzing, froze in its contemplation of the bed that had once had white sheets and a purple comforter before it had decided to dig through the soft things to see if the precious thing was hiding under them and was instantly in front of Dante.

Vergil had caught the flash of Father's (how odd, that this thing was Father) concern for the nestling that had called for it (Vergil had always thought of Father as he, but this form reminded him that he was a devil, and human genders didn't apply to them: Sparda was itself, not limited by human definitions such as gender) in the instant before it vanished at the sight of the amulet.

Dante's outstretched arm was almost tackled, Sparda curled up around it in an instant. _Here is precioussoul! _Father rejoiced. Dante winced as Sparda, all hard carapace with sharp edges and spikes, squeezed his upper arm along with the amulet.

Dante lowered his devil-covered arm down onto the bed. When Sparda didn't get off Dante tried shaking gently, releasing the amulet from his grip. Sparda tumbled off, landing in feathers from the shredded mattress and getting a great many of them stuck on him as he rolled around excitedly, wings clattering against each other excitedly.

Precious… soul? The amulet? Was it that he was associating it with Mother, or… Vergil looked at Dante, who was smiling at the ecstasy of their tiny father.

"Dante, why does he think the amulet is…" Vergil whispered, not wanting to let Sparda know if he was mistaken, if this was a trick of Dante's.

Dante looked at him and grinned more broadly.

Was he saying that… Vergil had studied the old tales of the devils that were considered gods. They often took… steps to preserve human lovers, let alone loves. He'd wondered why Sparda hadn't done something for Eva, and concluded that under the assault of so many demons it must have failed, or not been completed by his death in the first place.

It seemed that he had underestimated his Father.

Dante's grin shrank as he saw the look on Vergil's face.

He had killed so many people. He had attacked Dante. He had served Mundus.

Father, he had always hoped that Father would, as a devil, understand his quest for power: after all, Father had been a traitor to save humanity, surely he would forgive Vergil for 'lesser' crimes (as demons saw it) for the same goal?

Now, he knew that his excuses were just that, that Father would be ashamed of him, and it hurt because he had always wanted Father to love him best as Mother loved Dante. Now, next to Dante, he knew that Father would obviously prefer the stronger one, the victor.

But Mother…

How could he look- forget looking her in the eye, how could he be in the same house as her with what he had done, how he had betrayed her upbringing, used her training to be traitor for all she had stood for? She had trusted him!

She had loved him, Dante had loved him, he wanted to believe he remembered Father loving him.

He had betrayed them all.


	24. Penates

_Disclaimer: I do not own Devil May Cry, nor do I make money from this. _

_I know the chapter title is Roman, and I've always used Greek, but the Roman city penates were supposedly brought from Troy, which I say counts. So there. _

_-_

_Penates_

_-_

Dante closed the door and activated the ward on it. Then he quickly spun around, sensing something, and sighed. Vergil turned to look where Dante was looking, and saw Sparda hanging in the air at head level, looking at them curiously.

"I thought I told you to stay in the room!" Dante pointed at the door, aggravated. _I said stay!_

_Protect nestlings, _Sparda answered firmly, starting to fly around them and look at everything for potential threats.

Dante was trying not to glare, and Vergil wilted even though Dante wasn't irritated with him. "What if I stay with him?"

"Good idea. Would it work?" Dante asked.

_Father? _Vergil queried.

Sparda was instantly attentive, hovering in front of him. _Elder nestling? _

_Dante needs to go do things, and I will stay here. _Dante couldn't go out hunting with a little devil hanging around him, it would scare people and alert Mundus' forces that Sparda was alive.

Spardas wings buzzed, unhappy. _Nestlings should stay together. _

Vergil knew. They should have stayed together, he should have not fallen into hell to get away from Dante and Dante's defeat of him. _He has things that must be done. I am weak, wounded nestling. _He was, though it shamed him. _Stay with me? Please?_

Sparda flew up to his chest and Vergil slowly wrapped his arms around him. _Will stay with nestling who needs me. Other nestling is… _Scarily powerful. _Doesn't need. _His wings drooped as he thought this.

_He has grown powerful. _Without your help, guidance, care. Vergil understood how Sparda felt. He had been the elder, Sparda's heir, the strong one, the one that would save the world. Instead, all his plans had been turned against him by a human and Dante had been the one to do most of the work in defeating him, then defeated Vergil when mere hours before he had been unable to even use his devil powers! How could Dante, who wasted his time partying, be able to match all of Vergil's hard earned skill? Was Dante simply that much better than him?

He had jumped because he couldn't stand being defeated, living with Dante, knowing that he was the loser and Dante the victor.

Instead, he had become the ultimate loser, falling to Mundus, becoming his brainwashed slave, needing Dante to rescue him.

Dante, who should have been saved by his big brother.

_He still loves you: he got you back. _Was Vergil reassuring himself as well as Sparda?

_Can taste that. But also is angry. _Sparda curled up slightly as Dante snuck away while he was distracted, flashing a grateful smile at Vergil. Demoted from savior of the world to babysitter. Still, it was something that Dante trusted him, the 'homicidal maniac' that had until recently been under the control of someone who wanted to destroy Sparda utterly, to look after him.

Vergil knew that he had been examined, that all the control spells had been broken by Dante's victory. That was the demon way: no one booby-trapped a devil arm. It was unthinkable, he'd learned that much about his father's culture. Still, he feared that some compulsion would rise up in him to harm the father he had always worshipped while he was helpless, weak and small.

"Why don't we go back in your room?" Vergil asked, speaking slowly and trying to see if Sparda knew English. They hadn't really been able to verify what state he was in. Was the small size a result of small power, or was there some other problem that wouldn't be solved as he recovered and grew stronger? What memories did he have access to? Why was he so scatter-brained (Vergil cringed at the thought of applying that word to his father, who Eva had said was intelligent and studious: Vergil had modeled himself after him) about everything but protecting them.

_Nestplace? Yes. _Sparda poked at the door, the seal answering to his touch and immediately dissipating. Well, Sparda had created the castle's defenses in the first place: of course they would not hold him, you would have to be a fool to create traps that you would fall prey to. Father had been no fool.

It was rather cute to see the little thing work the handles and push the double doors open, buzzing happiness at the achievement. Vergil walked through. Sparda must have displaced out. So he still had his techniques… if it was a technique instead of his own power, either inherent or learned.

Sparda flew over to the ruined bed and poked at it: this would never do. After closing the door firmly behind Vergil, he went over to the couch and picked up a pillow, putting it down on the floor. Then he went back and got another one, and another. When the couch and the two chairs were denuded of pillows, he went to another room of the suite.

Vergil knew what he was doing, he remembered making pillow forts with Dante to sleep in. One time while Mother was busy in the study they had half-filled a small room with pillows, and burrowed around in them. Mother had made them put the pillows back after a day or two, but it had been great fun.

She had also told them that when they were small, they liked to sleep among a pile of pillows and blankets, that Sparda had told her nestlings liked to be hidden. So, Sparda was making him a safe place to rest.

He felt touched. Father didn't know what he had done (surely not) and he wanted to savor this kindness until Father knew.

After there was a hollow of pillows, Sparda flew over to him, got a good grip on his shoulder, picked him up (too surprised to struggle or protest), and flew him over to the nest, putting him down in the center of it and then pushing the sides of the pillow pile in around him. He didn't completely bury Vergil, but when he was almost buried went to the bed and pulled the blankets from it to put on top of him. Then he wiggled under the blankets to Vergil, who had made himself comfortable: they hadn't had any sleep since Sparda woke up, observing him and trying to communicate (he had improved greatly). It had been a couple days: as children, they had needed a normal amount of sleep but as they aged it had lessened dramatically.

Sparda, however, was dead tired. He curled up on top of Vergil, between him and danger. "Geril," he said, the sound coming deep from his throat.

It sounded demonic: Vergil diddn't recognize the word, however.

Sparda tried again. "Vurrgl."

"Vergil?" Sparda was trying to say his name? It must be difficult for him to speak human in devil form: the vocal cords were entirely different, he needed to alter them slightly using the shape-shifting power devils possessed to sound natural.

_Yes. Eldernestling Strength. _Sparda nuzzled him. _Was small… love one who was little and now is big. Will protect. Am sorry failed. Won't fail again. Promise._

"Father…" He wrapped an arm around him. _Love. _


	25. Prometheus

_Disclaimer: I do not own DMC nor am I recompensed for my time. Except in reviews. _

_-_

_Prometheus_

_-_

Vergil stayed there with his father long after they had both woken up, resting and enjoying each other's company. No words were exchanged. He had wanted this as a child, this bond, missed it: now he had it and did not deserve it. When Sparda knew… he should savor this while he could, even though knowing what he was deprived of would make the rejection hurt even more.

There was a knock at the door, too light to be Dante: he always banged hard twice, this was a quick patter of six knocks, light enough not to disturb a sleeper (unless they were Vergil, who was hair-triggered), but loud enough to be easily heard even through blankets.

"Yes?" Vergil called.

"It's me, babycakes. Your brother's not back yet, so I thought I'd bring the food." Nevan. _Food, _she added.

_Will get, _Sparda told Vergil, and squirmed out of the fort.

He heard the door opening and hoped Sparda would not remember Nevan had belonged to Mundus.

_Is safe, _Sparda told him when he sensed Vergil's worry. _Belongs to younger nestling, Endurance. _ Dante.

"Here you go, you cute little thing you." He heard claws tap against metal as Sparda took a tray, or so Vergil guessed, and, quietly, a hand patting a carapace-covered head.

_Thank you. _Vergil heard Nevan close the doors as Sparda flew back to him, putting the tray on the ground and then lifting the blankets off of Vergil. Sparda sat down as Vergil pushed down a wall of the fort so he could get out.

The tray had two plates: salmon and rice with a glass of water for Vergil and raw steak for Sparda: in devil form he wouldn't be able to digest anything but meat in the way of solid food, emotion was another matter.

Sparda waited for Vergil to start eating before he did, picking the pieces up with taloned hands, first nibbling and then, after he knew they were good, eating them whole. _This is good, but there is other food. _

"What?" Vergil asked.

_Only remembered now, seeing food. I had the food in souls stored in something that wasn't a soul, because imprisoning human souls hurts them. Much power there, for in case hurt badly. Will go get now. _Sparda flew up, concentrated to reactivate the wards on the room, and then flew down through the floor.

Vergil waited, but Sparda didn't come back. _Father? _He called.

There was only a weak response, from far below. The caves beneath the castle.

What if he had overloaded trying to absorb enough power to recover? Vergil pushed open the doors and headed for the stairs.

Yes, the trace of Sparda's presence was coming from below here, where his workrooms were, but the door did not open, sealed only to him. _Father! Father, wake up! Worry!_ What if Sparda died again, became his devil arm? Would they ever be able to unseal these rooms and retrieve it to raise him again? It would all be Vergil's fault for not stopping him!

_Nestling?_ The trace was stronger now.

_Father, come back to me! _He tried to mimic the lost nestling he felt like, tried to focus on the need for his father that it seemed like had always been with him, use Sparda's misplaced desire to protect his son to rouse him.

_Can't… come here. _The wards relaxed.

Vergil ran down the stairs: the sixth door along was open. "Father!" he called, rushing in.

A body lay on the floor near a broken jar that had spilled things that looked like white marbles but radiated power. A human body. A groan came from it.

The next thing Vergil knew he was next to it. "Are you alright?"

"I should have waited until I had eaten a fourth," Sparda answered, carefully pushing himself up to his knees. Vergil offered him a hand. "Thank you." He took a deep breath. "Well, that seems to work. I'll know if I failed to shape some organ correctly if my healing energy starts being drained." He stood with Vergil's help and then leaned against the counter. "Oh dear. Don't touch them, they're modified white orbs and will try to drain your power as you are not I." He showed Vergil his hands, which wore leather gloves.

Vergil noticed his appearance for the first time.

He looked exactly as he did in most of the pictures: the clothing, the amulet around his neck, the hair, the eyes (so like his own), the wisdom: the only thing wrong was the tiredness.

That and the fact that he was beginning to look amazed as he pulled himself together. "How on earth did you survive?"

"We managed."

"Eva died not long after I was defeated. How on earth… you were children even by human standards. That you survived, let alone that you grew this powerful, is simply impossible! It's know that human hybrids mature faster, but this much power so young?"

"I'm not that strong."

"Only compared to Dante. I've never seen… Mundus' strength was that of a legend, it was how he gained so many followers, but Dante eclipses him!" Sparda shook his head. "I can't understand it. I'm not a weak devil despite my defeat, but first nestlings are always weaker, as human hybrids are weaker. How is it possible he triumphed over Mundus?"

"He had help, Trish," Vergil explained.

"Trish?"

"The clone of Mother."

Sparda relaxed. "You know she is not your Mother?"

"Of course. She's part human, so she was able to rebel against Mundus and side with Dante."

"I see… and I have attacked her when I should have thanked her for doing what I could not..." Sparda's knees buckled as he tried to take a step. "Did I do something wrong: no, merely out of practice…" Another, better, though he braced himself against the counter.

"Here, Father, let me help you." Vergil reached out to him.

"You were captured by Mundus."

"Yes." How did you know?

"It's obvious that you've been tortured, it's stunted your growth. You would be much closer to Dante's level otherwise, twins are meant to be equal." He swayed a little, letting Vergil support him.

So he wasn't inherently weaker than Dante? It was all Mundus' fault? But that didn't explain how Dante had defeated him on Temen ni Gru.

"I'm so sorry. I failed you all." Sparda lowered his head. "I am unworthy to be called your father."

"What?" Don't you want me as your son?

"I am Dante's devil arm now, I shall serve him as best I can, if he lets me despite my failure."

Father would be Dante's? As Mother had favored Dante?

That was fair, Dante was the savior, Vergil was the traitor, the weak one.

But still, it hurt to hear this from the one he had hoped would love him best, even though he should have given up on that by now.


	26. Enyo

_Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry, nor am I recompensed for my time._

_-_

_Enyo_

_-_

As soon as they got upstairs, Vergil wrote a note and sent it via one of Nevan's bats. Dante didn't want them using the phones since they were getting more and more computerized and it was easier and easier to listen in. Sparda being revived, not to mention that Vergil was also alive, was big news that it was best to keep a secret for now.

Unusually for someone who liked to be fashionably late, Dante was there about a minute later: he must have been in the office. He actually knocked before coming into the sitting room of the master suite, where Father and Mother had once slept. Dante knocking didn't really seem like him. It must be because of Father. His presence seemed to be making Dante somewhat nervous. Dante being nervous scared Vergil slightly: if Dante was scared, he should be more scared, and he was.

Sparda was sure to reject him once he knew what had happened.

The person in question had collapsed into an armchair, still finding it hard to remain standing. He looked out of it even now, clearly fighting to keep his mind clear. He shook his head slightly or blinked several times often, mannerisms that Vergil saw in himself. He was glad, even now, to see his Father in himself, even though…

"Are you okay?" Dante asked, leaning Rebellion against the wall.

"I will be fine," Sparda assured him. "But I must know what is going on before I may rest. Will there be a battle soon I should prepare for? That affects how I should try to recover."

"Well, I kicked Mundus' ass a few years ago."

"Yes, I think I was aware of some of that." He nodded slightly, eyes focusing on dim memories.

"Since then, he hasn't shown his face, although some of his flunkies have, like on Vie du Marli most recently. He probably won't attack soon after that defeat, he'll want to marshal his forces. If he finds out you're close to being back in action, though, he might try to take you out early."

"So then I should stay here and be quiet?" Sparda nodded. "That is perhaps best. I can try to more lastingly restore my power instead of quickly try to regain battle readiness, a temporary healing that would leave me exhausted after the fight."

"Yeah, basically. I was going to tell you you'd better stay here." Dante nodded. "You attracting attention would cause all sorts of things to happen as soon as people got their acts together, Mundus is only one of them."

"Thank you, Dante." Sparda bowed his head. "Thank you for the hospitality and protection despite my failure to protect you."

"Well, I got over it. It wasn't like you wanted it to happen." Dante shrugged. "I hated you for awhile there, though."

"I deserve it," he answered, head still bowed. "How is it that you survived?"

"Well, Mom decided she had to have us learn more stuff than we could here when we were five. She kept moving, and didn't make plans in advance. So we were hard to hit. They finally managed a big enough assault when we were eight, but she managed to warn us and cover for us long enough for Vergil to run and for me to hide. Then, we both kept hidden until we were around sixteen, and after that we were able to handle what came after us." Dante shrugged.

Sparda wrapped a hand around the amulet, eyes closing. Mourning and gratitude for his wife. After a long moment, he opened and raised his eyes. "I think… my sword was taken, sealed, then Vergil briefly, he fought you, then you held it… then years of nothing and then I felt another fight between both of you, the seal released, Eva… you fought Mundus… then the… Trish?"

"Yeah, Trish. She's human enough to be able to disobey. She decided serving me was better than Mundus."

"A wise choice," Sparda murmured. "You gave her both my sword and this." He squeezed the amulet, still clenched tightly in his hand. "So she must be worthy of trust. I shall apologize to her."

"Yeah. She was upset earlier."

"Why did you fight?" Sparda asked both of them. "It felt as though it was more than simply sparring."

"Well, the first time was because I didn't really get why Vergil had gone after you," Dante told him. "Afterwards, he went to fight Mundus, and that bought time for me to get out of the underworld and for the gate to close before too many demons could come through for me to handle."

Sparda looked to Vergil. "You fought _Mundus? _Alone, and so young? Trapped in…" Horror on his face and he realized. "_No."_ It could not be, it must not be.

Vergil averted his eyes. "It was my fault, not Dante's. I didn't tell him what was really going on, I gave him every reason to believe I was doing it only for power, that I'd rejected everything you stood for. I fell into there of my own will. I was stupidly arrogant and I deserved to suffer for it."

"Vergil, you know that's not true," Dante said forcefully.

"I killed people, Dante, you know that, I… I deserved it." He didn't want to detail his crimes in front of Father, though he'd find out anyway.

He tried to suppress the memories that were returning of his time as Mundus' slave, the pain, the torment, the agony, the knowledge that he was scum (traitor's son) and deserved all of it, and was so focused on that he failed to detect Father moving toward him until arms were around him and his cheek was gently nuzzled. "Vergil, you are amazingly strong to have survived Mundus, who must have tried to break you, still so strong. You will recover, in time."

"I don't deserve power," he answered quietly. "I'm not… Dante needs to be stronger than me, in case…" In case I go evil again, because I'm not trustworthy. He couldn't let Father believe a lie. "I killed people. Humans, innocent ones. Dante was happy and I killed the people he cared about so he would remember and return to me, when even after that he didn't remember I tried to kill him so his soul would be mine. It's a miracle I didn't kill him at some point, I would have on Temen ni Gru but Arkham stopped me, I…" He shook his head. "I'm a murderer, Father. What I was trying to do doesn't justify it, I did it for me, because I was arrogant, and I didn't stop doing it, I killed people because they annoyed me. And it was all for nothing, Dante was the one who won." He jerked away from Sparda. "You shouldn't love me." Because he could feel that he did, and it was so wonderful and it hurt so much.

"Excuse me." And he fled the room.


	27. Harmonia

_Disclaimer: I do not own Devil May Cry, nor am I being paid for my time spent advertising it. _

_-_

_Harmonia_

_-_

Vergil was too distraught to think: if he had done so, he would have realized that since they loved him, foolish though that was, they would not leave him like this. If he had realized that, he would have kept running instead of merely fleeing into the next room and leaning his head against the opposite wall, shoulders hunched as though he was trying to shrink into the wall, hide and be nothing.

Seconds later, there were two pairs of arms around him.

_Twin? _

_Nestling? _

Concern, caring, love for their son and brother: that was what he felt from the two with the most reason to hate him in the world. They had loved him and he had betrayed them. He had almost undone Sparda's work and he had almost killed Dante.

_Almost, _they reminded him. _You didn't. _

_You spared me, even under Mundus' control, _Dante reminded him.

_You would have broken free eventually. You're stronger than me._ He was weak, worthless: Dante was the strong one, the good one, the victor.

_You always beat me the first round. Remember the tower? If you hadn't left me there then, you could have killed me instead of letting me live. _

_Only because of _Arkham. Vergil knew he deserved no credit for that, remembered the bloodlust, the excitement at Dante finally freeing his demon, finally becoming more like Vergil: finally having the chance to truly see who was better, prove his superiority over his foolish brother, prove that he was in the right in a glorious battle. And when they had battled?

Might made right, that was the demon way. Dante had been stronger, Dante had deserved to win, Vergil had been wrong all along. He couldn't stand that. He'd wanted to die, jumping in.

Instead he had been used to hurt Dante yet again, the slave of their enemy until Dante rescued him.

_Bullshit, Vergil. If you'd really wanted to you wouldn't have let that freak tell you what to do._ Dante snorted.

_It is natural to want to fight your Twin, _Sparda told them. _Those who used you simply twisted a healthy instinct, that is why you were eager to hurt him. _

… That was Vergil's secret shame, that as Nelo Angelo he had _wanted _to defeat Dante, had laughed while he didn't remember: he had been conditioned that Dante was the symbol of all his pain, the urge for vengeance that should have made him fight Mundus turned on Dante. He had wanted his own brother's blood. And in the tower… oh, he remembered every second of those fights: he'd felt truly alive then, such power and strength! His own worthy opponent, the one whose defeat truly meant something! Not like lesser demons.

He'd derived a twisted pleasure from fighting his own brother, he'd wanted to beat him down into the ground and stand over his fallen body… the thought had made him so excited.

_I wanted to fight you too. Not just to kick your ass, to fight and try to… get through to you, be like we were before: fighting you reminded me of when we were together, safe with Mother, and it was play, for fun and to get stronger, and you taught me… I learned from you as you fought, that was how I could beat you, _Dante told him, remembering. _Is that why… No, Vergil, I get that you wanted to fight me. When I saw you on Mallet, I knew that finally I had a worthy opponent to fight, even though I didn't recognize you. I thought you were a rip-off of Dad._

_That's all I am, Dante. Everything good about me is because of my family, and I did my best to degrade myself and their gifts. Allying with demons when they killed Mother, undoing Father's seal, betraying you…_

_Vergil, no_. Sparda squeezed him. _You were a nestling, you did what you though was best. Do you realize that you survived where I would not have at that age? You did your best, Vergil, the best you knew. It was not your fault I failed and was not there to teach you. Do you realize how much of a miracle it is that you survived, and are _sane_? You should be mad, broken, if you did not have amazing strength of soul. _

_That's none of my doing, it's because Dante saved me, and I inherited my strength, I didn't earn it. _Still, Sparda's words warmed him. He wasn't hated? He was accepted? Sparda was sad that Vergil had killed, but wasn't angry? Well, Sparda had killed plenty of humans before he had seen the light.

_That's right. You killed a thousandth of the number I did. Such an improvement over my record, eldest nestling. _Another squeeze. _Nestling, neither I nor your twin will stop loving you. Not even if you aided Mundus willingly. You fought him, child. You did everything to be worthy of me, when I failed you! I am the one that does not deserve your love, not the other way around. I am the one to blame. You should not have been on your own so young! _

_Dante did fine. _

Dante laughed. _I had amnesia, thought I was a human, and wasn't training seriously! If you hadn't found me, Vergil, I would haven't known to stop Mundus coming through at all! I would have been an easy target, probably even fall in the first wave of the invasion! Face it, Vergil, you saved the world. If you hadn't gone after me, no me. If you hadn't gone after Dad's sword, no sword. Without that, Mundus would have gotten his army through Mallet Island's portal no sweat. I only won because of you, Vergil! So quit saying I'm the only strong one. I'm the idiot, you were the one who saw what needed to be done and did it! Sure, you could have done it differently, but still. _

… So he did have a share in the victory? More than just failing to kill his brother? He had dropped the amulet for him…

_Not to mention not killing me and the amulet. Exactly. _Dante squeezed him. _We're all here because of _you, _Vergil. _

_We love you, and you deserve it. _Sparda kissed his cheek softly. _My brave, strong son. _

It sounded reasonable, but he knew it couldn't be true, he was evil weak scum… or that was what Mundus had taught him.

At least he wasn't hated, he could believe that when he felt the love all around him, warming him. His muscles relaxed in their hold, and they relaxed, glad he felt better again.

His family though he was good, Mundus had said he was scum. His family was stronger, so they were probably right.

If only he could make himself believe.


	28. Hera

_Disclaimer: I do not own Devil May Cry and I do not get paid, not even minimum wage for the writing I do. _

_Here you go: the final chapter of Angel Harp. It might be a bit before Angel Halo, the next part, starts. _

_-_

_Hera_

_- _

Eventually, Sparda easily picked Vergil up and carried him to the bedroom. He winced at the destruction he had wrought on the defenseless bed while he had been in his weak state. The bed then seemed to mend itself: a spell? Vergil had detected barely anything.

What Arkham had told him about the seals Sparda had cast on Temen ni Gru had made Vergil begin to realize the difference between the legendary dark knight and himself: Sparda, even two thousand years ago, had been able to work magic that seemed impossible to the eighteen-year-old Vergil. He did this now so easily: true, demons could cast magic so quickly in combat, but those were either inherent abilities or the activation of spells they had already cast. Surely Sparda didn't have a repairing spell pre-cast when he had just now regained his senses!

Then Vergil felt like a fool. The spell must have been cast on the castle, long before Sparda's death. It made sense for a warrior to prepare for the damage caused by an attack, even though the castle's wards were incredible.

Sparda sat down on the bed and arranged Vergil into a comfortable position, half lying on him and half on the bed. Sparda stroked his hair. "Dante, how much physical contact have you two had recently?"

"Not much." Dante seemed worried by the question.

"It is not your fault, I doubt you knew this, but Vergil is much more of a nestling than you. You have nearly grown out of the need, but nestlings require physical contact and affection to develop properly: the more, the better. That is one reason devils are often created as twins, some of the others being mental stimulation and having a ready-made sparring partner." Sparda stroked Vergil's back soothingly. Vergil felt tired: his emotions nearly breaking free always exhausted him. He felt cold: Sparda was warm, soothing.

"We were alone for years." Dante frowned.

"And from what I understand neither of you were completely rational during that time. I assume you had more human contact than Vergil?"

"Well, I had some buddies, yeah."

"I am glad." Sparda continued to pet Vergil, smiling down at him. "When you rescued him from Mundus-I thank you again-you stayed with him and held him often, correct?"

"Yeah. That helped?"

"Very much. He seems half-starved: how long has it been since you stopped touching him?"

"Well, he ran away for a few years."

Sparda was shocked. "Ran away? From his twin and protector? In this state?" He clearly considered this psychologically impossible.

"He attacked me, and he wanted to protect me by staying away. He seemed better when he came back." Dante grimaced. "I did try to track him down."

"Well, he seems… independence, taking care of oneself is good for humans of that mental age, at least…" Sparda frowned. "Most devils that had part-human offspring were more interested in their utility as servants than studying the interaction of such different sets of instincts and psychological traits. Also, most of them were either mostly human or mostly demon, not a balance. The Vie du Marlians are descended from the more human ones: the ones who were more controlled by demonic instincts and culture went into Mundus' service when he defeated the ones they served. The human-like ones, on the other hand, sought vengeance. So, you and Vergil are quite outside my knowledge. Far more powerful than any prior halfbreeds as well."

"Yeah, I know we're unprecedented." Dante took pride in it.

"I have studied human psychology and I have a very good understanding of demonic nature: I was well educated to be a commander, and that requires knowledge of basic psychology. So, I will do what I can for you both." Sparda bowed shallowly enough to dislodge Vergil.

"Why are you bowing?" Dante raised an eyebrow.

"Because you are my master. I have no desire to rebel against you."

"Bullshit."

"What?" Sparda seemed struck. Did his son think he would betray him.

"You're family. I know how it works for devils and I don't care about how they do it in the underworld, this is Earth and for humans family doesn't own family. Vergil's his own person, so are you, and so will Mom be when we get her out of the amulet. I don't want you bowing to me. I saved you guys because I wanted my family back, not because I wanted more servants. I've got tons of devil arms, you're the only family I've got."

Sparda closed his eyes and smiled wryly for a moment. "You still desire me to be your father? When I failed you all?" He clearly felt this was impossible.

"You're our father," Vergil told him. "We wanted you back. If I'm still your son even though I failed, you're still my father." Don't reject me, us. He held on to him tighter.

"Like Vergil said," Dante agreed. "I said one time I didn't have a father. I was being an idiot. You didn't want to abandon us, right?"

"I fought my hardest to be able to return to you, but it was not enough." Head bowed in shame.

"Then don't give up on being our father when you've got the chance. That _would_ be abandoning us, giving up the fight. _That_ would be shameful. If you do that, I'll kick your ass, even if you're in no shape to fight back." Dante glared slightly. "Our father rebelled against Mundus. Our father is capable of not treating his own sons like he once treated Mundus." A challenge.

Sparda raised his head, met Dante's eyes, and nodded in acceptance of the challenge. Vergil sighed in relief. "I shall be the father you deserve, then, and fight for you and your mother." His hand went to the amulet again, leaving only the one holding Vergil.

Vergil knew Father would love Mother more than him: he accepted it. Once again Dante had been the one to save their family. Surely Father would love the strong son who challenged him more than the baby he cradled.


	29. V Angel Halo: Iris

_Disclaimer: I do not own Devil May Cry, and I make no money whatsoever from this. _

_Welcome to the first chapter of the fifth part out of seven of this fanfic. First it was going to be one part, then three… Well, if people like it, it's worth the effort. _

_-_

_Angel Halo –_

_Iris_

-

When Dante stepped through the portal back into Devil May Cry he did _not_ immediately have a bad feeling. Of all the times for his precognition to fail him. Usually he knew when something big was about to go down, but no, he just headed for the front office.

Nevan tried to warn him before he entered. "Sugar, there's a suit here to see you," but what threat were suits to him? Sure, he got a sense of impending doom from her tone of voice, but it was only the doom of having his time wasted. Even when they were here about something big, bureaucrats were never able to cut to the chase. At least they tended to leave the furniture intact. So he strode fearlessly into the front office.

And came back ten minutes later with some papers. "Hell. Nevan, why didn't you warn me?" He waved them. "_Shit._"

"I did, Sugar." She looked up, an eyebrow also rising. What could make _Dante_ wince? The man, devil, whatever who had faced down Mundus?

"They know we've got Vergil."

If he had told this to Beowulf, the response would have been so what? Nevan, however, understood that even though Dante could assassinate the president anytime he felt like it he did indeed still have to give a damn about the government of the country he lived in, especially when it was the most powerful in the world. He couldn't kill _all_ of them, not without ending up the ruler of the world and no way was he copying Mundus.

A challenge to single combat was not going to make this go away.

"What did you tell him?"

"I did the what are you talking about, but they have him on tape. Remember when he went on that mission alone while we were all gone? The woman had a security camera, the guy said she lived above her store. She called the cops, Daniels took the tape like he always does so no one else gets ahold of it, the tape went to the so-called proper authorities," he didn't like the fact the government was studying demons at all. People were corruptible and he loathed people trying to play REMF in the only _real_ war. "And they managed to ID him as Vergil."

"Did you play the clone angle? After all, look at Trish," Nevan suggested.

"Damn it. I should have brought you in there with me. No, I didn't think of that." Dante dumped the papers on the desk. "We've got to turn him into 'proper' custody within the week. And I need to find a lawyer who'll defend someone who unleashed demons on New York City and broke the big legendary seal."

Nevan coughed. She never caught colds. This mild, unassuming cough was code for, I don't sleep, you know I have all those law books, who fixed all those parking tickets for you when you were twenty?

"A lawyer who isn't a demon. Maybe someone Dad knows is still alive and non-senile." He sighed. They wouldn't listen to a word Nevan said because of her race. They'd say that only a demon could contemplate defending someone so evil…

This was bad, bad news.

"Nevan, hold the fort, I need to go tell Dad about this." He headed right back for the portal.

Shit, he would need to tell _Vergil _about this.

There had to be some way to keep Vergil with them. Hell, he had Sparda looking after him, how more secure could he get? Though the humans might say he was biased, being the criminal's father… He hated thinking like that kind of person, the kind that hated demons worse than Nazis did Jews, all twisted. He'd once hated demons and hence himself.

Vergil hated himself. Learning that even though Dante and Sparda might 'claim' to have forgiven his crimes the rest of the world still thought of him as right up there with Judas wasn't going to help matters.

Hell, they weren't going to be happy that Vergil had been allowed to run around loose for years without them even picking up on it. They would be able to claim just about any demonic attack they liked had been committed by him, and Dante wouldn't be able to prove otherwise.

What he knew about courts came from watching gruesome murder mysteries, but the prosecutor was going to have a field day. It did not look good for Vergil. Even if they managed to keep him _alive, _when he had been sentenced to execution, for crying out loud, having to sit in the courtroom and hear them saying what a monster he was, having to admit on the stand to everything he had done was going to kill whatever self-esteem he had left.

_Shit. _And Vergil wasn't going to even try to defend himself. Dante didn't have it in him to give up, but Vergil did. Vergil was going to be wanting them to execute him by the time it was halfway through, if not earlier, as the same sort of fucked-up penance he had wanted to do by throwing himself to certain death the first time.

Maybe they could find a psychologist to declare him mentally incompetent, or whatever they did so they didn't do anything to you until you were sane again? Or was that just America? America wanted him for the damage to New York, the UN had been the one to have the whole treason to humanity charges brought, since they were the closest thing to a representative body for humanity.

Dad was rich enough, they could maybe get away with paying a ton of money and having Vergil under house arrest for a few years for New York.

The problem was going to be keeping him alive.

Shit, if he relapsed to that state where the only thing he could do was curl up into a ball again because of this he was going to find somebody he could beat up without screwing Vergil's chanced up even more.


	30. Dike

_Disclaimer: I do not own Devil May Cry, nor do I make any money from this. _

_This chapter is dedicated to yuffie510, who is translating _Rapture _into Korean. If you want to see the translation, there is a link on my bio. They seem to actually like Daniels, from _Seas in Incarnadine, _so…_

_Dike is the Greek goddess of human justice, born as a human. _

_-_

_Dike_

_-_

"Look, I'm not an expert on the guy." Suits asking about Dante were never a good thing. Especially if one of them was from the UN. That was new, and new was usually bad, in his experience.

"You're the closest thing we have, Detective." Mr. Trevecino leaned back in his chair.

"There's an informant who's known him for years. I can find him for you if you want." Making you less interested in me.

"Enzo Ferino, of the Ferino crime family. Nephew of one of his former agents, during his time in Los Angeles under the pseudonym Tony Redgrave and distant relative of the agent of his mother, the hunter known as Eva Williams, real name unknown." The man had clearly done his research.

"Yeah, him."

"We'll get his testimony later, in court." Court? Dante _never_ went to court. "We want to know what you can tell us about him."

"Can you tell me what exactly you're trying to find out? I mean, everyone knows about his father."

"What kind of person is he, for a start."

"Well… hmm." He thought for a second. "He acts really flamboyant. That's part of why he's got such a following, why so many mercenaries are becoming hunters because of him. Which is great, because it tones down a lot of gang wars by taking the real heavy hitters out of the picture, and god knows we need more hunters. Of course, there's the heroism factor, because of all the rumors about him and his father."

"Excuse me, but we need to find out about Dante, not about his father."

"It's kind of hard to talk about one without the other," Daniels pointed out. "All in all, he shows off, acts like he doesn't give a damn but he's one of the better guys I know. I'd want him at my back, and not just because I'd be sure to get home alive then. Besides that, I don't know him personally that well. The thing is, unless you're a hunter, he kind of keeps you at a distance. That whole act of his. Because, well, a hunter with orbs can survive a slash to the chest, regular guys like me can't. He doesn't want people dying because of him. So most of the people he lets close are the demons he lives with, as far as I can tell."

"He associates mainly with demons, and accumulates more of them and more powerful ones as the years pass. Trish and Alastor seem to be able to leave on their own and function as somewhat free agents instead of regarding him as their absolute master."

"If you're implying he's collecting some sort of army and listening to demons more than to his human side, no way in hell." Daniels shook his head. "The guy's got reasons not to like us. A lot of people who know about his ancestry are rude as hell. I'm a cop, I see racism every day and it makes me sick even if it's usually not targeted at me. But most humans love the guy, and demons are the ones who killed his family and have been trying to kill him from the get-go. If you're implying he'd switch sides on us, well, weirder things have happened, but I've got to say I really don't see it. I see a lot of reasons why not."

"Yet his brother did betray humanity."

"The whole thing with the tower? There are two sides to that."

"Yes, Dante claims his brother had his best interests at heart. Yet, Vergil is his family. And he has recently demonstrated that he is willing to put family over human law and justice."

"What?"

A photo was slid against the table. "This is from some security footage you recovered of an action by Devil May Cry."

Daniels frowned. He didn't recognize the person in the photo, and he thought he knew all of Dante's staff. It was sort of his business to know them all. The person looked like old photos of Dante, from the Redgrave days, only thinner, now that he thought about it. Thinner and somehow haunted.

Dante's family. "You think this is Vergil? And that Dante's been harboring a criminal?" Without telling anyone? That, that was _serious._

If Daniels had been more a friend than a cop, he would have contemplated calling Dante and telling him shit was about to go down. But as much as he liked the guy, justice was justice and interfering with it was, well, even Dante shouldn't think he was _completely_ above the law just because he was… useful? He was treated differently from other people, which wasn't right, but…

Anyway, not good.

"Yes, that is exactly what we think." Narrowed eyes inspected him.

"What, do you think I knew about this?"

"Isn't it your job to know these things?"

"Like I said, Dante's good at keeping things private."

"In any case, you will be called to testify, as soon as we can work out who will be charged with what. Mr. von Schwärzung has already been notified. Even if this isn't Vergil, a demon on earth without the UN's knowledge is an illegal immigrant, so he is definitely breaking the law by harboring him."

Daniels tapped a finger on the table. "Right. So, he'd only hide someone if there was some real reason to hide them. My money is on it being Vergil, then." As much as he didn't want to believe it.

"Dante harbors demons, as far as we can tell his closest relationship is with a demoness… he's now hiding someone who betrayed humanity and unleashed havoc on New York City that makes the Two Towers seem insignificant for personal gain… Please begin preparing a report analyzing as much as you know of him, Detective. It seems to be time for the world to reevaluate the loyalty of a member of a family line with such a history." Mr. Trevecino stood, the interview, such as it had been, clearly over.

Daniels had expected to be grilled, but it looked like the man was in a hurry. Good, that gave him time to think.

Damn it, Dante. He'd liked the guy. Had wanted to like the guy, had stood up for him when people talked about the possibility of… something like this.

Damn it.


	31. Epimetheus

_Disclaimer: I don't own or profit._

_- _

_Epimetheus_

_-_

"Oh, my." Sparda winced.

"It's probably my fault it's this bad," Dante said, grimacing as he read the language of the document. "If I'd told them about him when I'd recovered him…"

"I shall need to see what will apply to today's laws, but at least Vergil can speak now in his own defense." Sparda moved to turn the page, then stopped. "May I read ahead?"

"I've already got a copy, this one's for you." Dante waved for him to go ahead. Sparda settled in to speed-read it. "But will Vergil speak in his own defense?"

"If it is put to him properly. He will not lie, after all, and if the right questions are asked by the defense his guilt and contrition will be made clear by his refusal to phrase things so they appear in their best light." Pages turning.

"If I'd shown them him right away, he might have gotten the sentence put off for mental incompetence."

"They say that hindsight is perfect, or at least I am certain they still say it. You wanted to protect your brother, a laudable instinct." Sparda glanced up. "I have ordered modern law books already. May I speak with Nevan, as she seems to be your expert on such matters?"

"Why not? Anything that'll help save Vergil." Stupid question.

"By my customs, I had to ask." Sparda shrugged. "I think you had better be the one to tell your brother."

"Now?"

"You think anything will be served by keeping it from him further?"

"Well, I couldn't tell him about the sentence right away!"

"Yes, he was too fragile, but now he needs to know, and not telling him will show you do not think he is… tell him, Dante."

"Okay, let's go."

Sparda shook his head. "I should not be there."

"What?"

"You are his twin, I am the one he has tried to measure up to. Seeing me when told this news will make him even more aware of what he regards as his failure." Another shake of his head, this time at the irony of Vergil thinking himself the failure and Sparda the one he needed to live up to when Sparda felt it was the other way around.

"But if you aren't there, he'll think you don't want to look at him."

"I will come in as soon as you have broken the news and he has started to digest it, to help comfort him." Sparda nodded. Of course he would try to help his child. "But you must be the one to tell him."

"When I'm the one who took all the credit for what he tried to do while he got branded the big villain then."

"He won't think that."

"I wish he would."

"You feel guilty." Sparda smiled slightly. "When you're the only one with nothing to feel guilty about."

"Neither do you or Vergil. You did your best." How many times was he going to say that before they believed it? It was getting annoying, but he knew they weren't doing it to irritate. They probably felt the same about his own guilt, the guilt he carried for not rescuing them sooner.

Sparda nodded, acknowledging Dante's statement, not wanting to waste their time by contesting it.

Dante wondered if Sparda was trying to get out of telling Vergil. No, Sparda had been dead the whole time, so… Dante was the one who hadn't defended Vergil well enough. Dante had been a kid then, without a name for himself. Now, he had saved the world a few times. Not to mention that now they had Sparda.

Dad had made a huge name for himself. Even if there were people who said he had gone back to report or something when he disappeared, few would say something like that in his presence. He was a living (now) legend, and his plea for his son, for forgiveness of his error, for what he had done to try to rescue his father and the world of his birth, would surely have a huge impact. More than Dante's would have.

No, he wasn't jealous. Two thousand years was just more time to build up a track record. Sparda's was impeccable-bar the war crimes committed while he still served Mundus. Lots and lots of nasty stuff.

It was hard to connect his face, his demeanor, with the leader of the army that had committed those atrocities. Still… there had been nothing like Nuremberg back then.

Father was reading the papers, not glancing up at him with an expression of polite surprise that he hadn't bitten the bullet and gone into the room to tell Vergil yet. Dante could imagine the expression, though. Not that Sparda didn't understand Dante wanted time.

Since when did his conscience look like Father?

Since he'd actually gotten to know the man who had given up everything for what was right, the man a world idolized.

He should go in and tell Vergil, he really should. So he stood up and went. He'd never been one to let fear stop him. Not even the fear of hurting his own family.

Vergil was sitting and reading, probably something Father had given him with the suggestion that he really should learn about the modern world, despite the complete lack of interest he had once had in the human world around him. Vergil had wandered for years but not really paid attention to the advances around him: he'd avoided people, let alone their technology.

Dante sat down next to him on the bed and tried not to broadcast his extreme reluctance to be here about to tell his fragile twin this. They'd tried to get him to forgive himself and it was slow progress, what would happen when he found out what the world thought, or at least that part of the world that knew?

Vergil smiled at him, unaware and glad his brother had found time to visit him. He leaned towards Dante for a hug and Dante obliged him, holding on slightly longer than normal, not that Vergil noticed.

Looking at Vergil's face, the most urgent question to him was how long Dante could stay.

Not how long Vergil could stay alive.


	32. Intermission: Genetics 101

Disclaimer: I do not own or profit, Capcom does.

Warning: Filler sidestory. I make no apologies. It was this or nothing (there's been a semi-meltdown, IRL).

Alphabetasoup challenge theme: S is for Sedna

This ties into my whole blending DMCverse with non made up mythology. I love looking at things logically, it leads you fun and scary places. Chimera: someone with two distinct genetic codes in their body, e.g. a mouse with human cells inside them (it's been done).

Note that I'm not talking about crossbreeds like Dante and Vergil: it's canon that they're unusually strong for crossbreeds. These are the descendants of weaker ones, people with maybe 3/1024 demonic ancestry.

-

"I don't think I can help you," Dr. Steven Miller shook his head.

"Why not? You're the world's leading expert on genetic testing. If anyone can do it, your team can."

"I don't think genetic testing will solve this." He shook his head. "Despite all the science fiction that shows humans evolving on other worlds, the odds against completely foreign life being anything like ours are astronomical. They won't use DNA. We'd be looking for some sort of foreign body in the cell, or maybe not even in the cell, maybe only one in the entire body, to carry the genetic code. It would be like finding a needle in a haystack. And if, from what you say, these entities can become entirely non-physical, than we might even be looking for some sort of energy pattern, not an organic structure at all."

"But doesn't the fact they're able to interbreed show they use DNA?" The layman asked.

Steven raised an eyebrow. "Monkeys share the overwhelming majority of their DNA with ours, and we can't interbreed naturally. The fact it's easy for them to do indicates either the crossbreeds are either created artificially or it's simply a matter of giving them the foreign DNA equivalent as well as human DNA, creating a chimera." He shook his head. "From the five samples you've given me, I can't find a single thing odd about them, nothing that could be used identify crossbreeds." He leaned forward. "And even if I could, I wouldn't."

The man's eyes narrowed. "Dr. Miller…"

He held up a hand. "Think about what you're asking me for a second. You're asking me to identify, essentially, a racial group that will then become a target for persecution?"

"A racial group? Dr. Miller, we're talking about a small number of people with a predisposition towards extreme violence and the strength to carry out acts of enormous destruction."

"Small?" Dr. Miller stared at him. "You think they're a _small_ group?"

The man, Miller could never remember names, he had secretaries for that, paused for a moment. "What?"

"Didn't you have to study mythology in school? Greek, Egyptian, _any_ mythology?"

"Of course."

"Then didn't you notice that all the heroes, all the kings had divine ancestry? Heracles, Gilgamesh, the Japanese royal family… if the myths are true, practically every ruling family before Mundus' invasion had," he shouldn't say demonic, "other-dimensional ancestry. Think about that."

"But they were wiped out in the war, except the ones that fled to that island."

Miller shook his head. So naïve. "After thousands of years of interbreeding? Of those kings having sons and daughters that made alliance marriages until the entire nobility was descended from them, of those sons having bastards that married commoners generation after generation until the blood was incredibly watered down, to the point the descendants didn't pose a threat anymore? There wasn't _that_ much of a bloodbath."

"So you're saying that we could be talking about a large portion of the population?"

"I'm saying we could be talking about the _majority._" Steven sighed. "You also studied evolution, right?"

"The _majority?_"

"From the information you've given me, these beings, or at least the ones that breed with humans, are more intelligent than the average human, stronger, and with incredible abilities to survive injury and sickness. That means that their descendents would have advantages over their neighbors. They'd be far more likely to survive things like the Black Plague, they'd be more likely to accumulate wealth with the advantage of intelligence and the drive to be the strongest is supposedly an aspect of that species…"

The more he thought about it, the clearer it grew. "Did you know that primitive humans essentially lived in communes and had to work about four hours a day to have enough food to survive? They lived like that for thousands of years without much progress. It wasn't until well after the estimated time of first contact you've given me that they began to build cities, and since then we've had an exponential rate of progress… The size of the human brain has even increased." He wanted to get up and pace while he thought, but not in front of a provider of funding. "Professional athletes and criminals are only the obvious ones. The upper class. Doctors and academics, people with IQs above a certain point in general. People who have had spontaneous remissions. People who never catch colds. Soldiers, _obviously_. Anyone with large amounts of ambition, the drive to be the best and strongest. These are the people who will _almost certainly _be cross-breeds, given the information you've given me."

"So, you're saying that…"

"I'm saying that trying to remove 'demonic' traits from humanity would be the opposite of decimation: you'd be killing, or sterilizing, nine in ten instead of one in ten. At least." He shook his head. "And I won't help you do that. No doctor who holds to the Hippocratic Oath would."

"Especially since, if what you've said is true, doctors are likely to be carriers."

"And so are politicians." Man, hadn't this guy ever seen the X-men? And at least mutants were a minority. But this would be even worse: all the strong, violent, intelligent, _capable_ people would be on the other side (it was good to know that he thought of humanity as his side even though by his own logic he was a crossbreed himself). "So are most of the people you walk by on the street."

"And by getting rid of crossbreeds, we'd be getting rid of anyone capable of defending us against another invasion."

"From what you've said, the strongest, purest and most dangerous crossbreeds are the ones doing most of the defending now." Not just that, they'd be getting rid of the ones who made civilization work. "I think that if an identification method _was_ created, it could be used to identify 'superior' people, given that strength of bloodline seems to affect overall positive traits. We could be looking at something like Gattaca, if you've seen the movie."

"Oh come on, that's science fiction."

"The entire idea of science fiction is to point out possible futures. We've had people trying to become superior beings by turning themselves into chimeras for millennia, according to all this."

"But you're saying that most humans aren't human."

"I'm saying that normal humans are crossbreeds. The majority defines what's normal."


	33. Intermission: Living Legend

_Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry._

_Alphabetasoup challenge theme M is for Maui. Yet another intermission, I'm sorry!_

_-_

He was a legend.

The kind of legend not told as bedtime stories in suburban homes with the little white picket fences, but around fires on Southeast Asian islands: bottles of beer or something stronger instead of glasses of warm milk.

They said he was strong enough to toss motorcycles around like baseballs, hefted broadswords as easy as daggers, used guns the recoil of which would break someone's arm like a toothpick.

Tall tales for a tall man: six feet, no seven, no eight. Strong enough to beat up the sun.

If this had been the American frontier, in a few decades the stories might have joined those of Paul Bunyun, but these were stories told on the fringes of the civilized world, in the spaces where civilization broke down, among the people that chaos called in to restore order.

And chaos breeds havoc, idle hands the devil's work.

He could take down things that tore their way through fifty, a hundred armed men, just like them. And then used the bodies as puppets afterwards.

They saw it, all around them. Their bosses wanting a little extra power, a little extra edge.

Everything was going to hell.

You didn't have friends in this business. You had contacts.

And sometimes a city would become a black hole, and those contacts would lose everything, and you'd know that someone had resorted to _those_ methods.

Then he went there.

And normalcy resumed.

For awhile.

They didn't want to be statistics. Sometimes someone would lose someone… the world was getting chancier, even if the people in their houses didn't have a clue. And you needed that edge.

They didn't approach him, they would dare. But there was this woman in New York, people a few other places who could show you a few tricks, tricks that could let you live a little longer when it got dark out right after dawn.

And there was good money in following in his footsteps. The bosses could use men who could handle rivals with that edge. It was bad for business: people who fooled around with that sort of thing didn't have allies, only targets. Future food. It was worse than sampling the merch.

None of them were a thing next to him.

He held back the night.

The heart of their part of New York totaled, and no one did a thing about it but die or ignore: except him.

He went in there and kicked ass.

There were things out there: the world was an island of pretend peace in a sea of night, but humans weren't the only dangerous things out there.

They weren't in this line of work to be sheep.

And he was no shepherd.

Hunters, that was the old name for them. Yeah, that was a good name.

Did you hear? He…

A whole island, under the control of this guy, demons walking the streets eating anyone they felt like… He went there and…

Son of Sparda?

Who else could be strong enough?

Legends of a legend, spinning around a legend. If you'd met him, you wouldn't have to buy yourself drinks again: they'd buy them for you to loosen your lips.

Trophy heads on the wall of the _real _most dangerous game…

More than human, yeah. Larger than life. Kick ass and there's not enough left to take names. Walks through a hail of bullets without a scratch.

Had an evil twin? Like something out of a story.

The law couldn't lay a finger on them, and now they were the only ones… he was the only one. Because there was some bad shit going down. From all the way down, you know what I'm saying?

Saddle up, boys, because it's going to be a long night one of these nights.

But we've got our own legend to save the day.


	34. Intermission: Worldview

_Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry, Capcom does. _

_P is for Pangu – this is my last fic for the alphabetasoup challenge on livejournal! _

…_I do apologize if this is used as _Angel Saga_ filler. I recently got the comments from my second reader on my novel, and the deadline (I'm using it as my Upper Division Honors Project) is sooner than I would have hoped. So I'm getting the challenges done, but I'm afraid _Angel Saga_ is going on hiatus._

_I'd really like to have Daniel Jackson doing this, but I don't watch enough Stargate. _

_- _

"It's very hard to create a realistic threat assessment when every scrap of information about a culture is either worse than radioactive or filtered through generations of rumors." Jared Phillips sighed.

"Give me what you've got."

Jared pointed to the two inch thick bundle of papers on his desk. "Here's the report. A lot of it's speculation on limited source material."

"Boil it down for me and give me what you have that's reliable. I have to tell them something." Karen DeBois wondered if it was possible to have something stronger prescribed. She'd never had a migraine before, and was wondering if she was starting to get them. No, it was probably just stress.

"Okay. Well, according to them, their world came first. Then, our world either just appeared one day or their world split in two with them staying in one half and us evolving in the other. We have no real time frame on this. They found out about us, and there was interaction, and then Mundus managed to take them over and to cement his hold on power decided that since the two worlds were once one, they should be ruled as one."

He wished he wasn't wearing contacts: his old glasses could be pushed up his nose while he was trying to think, as they could be relied upon to slip. This had pushed his wife too far one day, however. "Before then, contact was basically peaceful. They would essentially trade miracles for sacrifices of various types. The Greeks used to give them the parts of animals humans don't like to eat, for instance: apparently demon teeth have no problem with bones and sinew. They also used to gather souls after they died: apparently they're an energy source of some kind. I can't give details without reading spell books, and you don't pay me enough to risk that brand of insanity. I may want to kill my wife sometimes, but I don't want to torture her to death."

"There was also intermarriage?"

"Not exactly what we would term marriage. There are a few cases of love matches but most of the interbreeding was done to create viceroys, or translators. Apparently devils have a really hard time figuring humans out." He smiled. "Which gives us an advantage if we can figure them out without going nuts."

"Let me know if we can."

"Okay, so Mundus changed everything with his ego trip. Then he got betrayed by Sparda. You want to know about Sparda, don't you."

"His sons are the central figures in this case."

"Do you know how many versions of the legend there are? They picture him as everything from a lone swordsman to Mundus' right hand man. Are you _sure_ I can't get information from the Vie du Marlians? They're the only ones likely to know the real story."

"They don't have diplomatic relations with us. Neither the US nor the UN exactly painted themselves with glory during the Arius affair. They won't give us anything unless we give them a good reason, and if they find out we're contemplating persecuting their hero," Karen mimed slitting her throat.

He nodded. "No one really says _why_ Sparda decided to help humanity. It's all in terms of clichés, like justice, but from what I gather Mundus wasn't treating humans any worse than demons treated other demons. In fact, if he was commanding Mundus' forces on Earth like most of the reliable sources say, well, except for the Vatican sources, but we all know how much the Catholic Church edits everything they get their hands on, then _he_ was dictating how humans should be treated. The idea seems to somehow be that humans and demons are fundamentally different and that neither should rule the other or be treated like the other or it will be bad for both of them, at least that's what he seems to be alluding to in those letters you found me." He sighed. "Damn it, I wish I had the rest of this correspondence. Those two are clarifying points made in other letters and I'm having to guess what the points were. I'm in analyst's hell."

"Any good news?"

"The good news is that a) after Sparda took down Mundus no one helped him retake Earth, not even to track down a traitor, and they seem to _despise_ traitors. So if Mundus wants to conquer us, he'll have to do it on his own. B) we had millennia of peaceful interaction. If we can return things to the status quo ante bellum…"

"Translation for those of us who didn't take Latin?

"The state of things before the war. Come on? As in, the Ante-Bellum South?"

"Not ringing any bells."

"Ha ha, very funny."


	35. Eunomia

_Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry, nor do I profit from this._

_I did no research whatsoever. So sue me. _

_Sorry about the filler: I wanted to post _something

_-_

_Eunomia_

_-_

It maybe would have been a lot better if Vergil had been shocked and horrified. As it was, he seemed to take the news of the world's opinion of him calmly, though a gulp betrayed him, as though it was what he deserved.

That _irritated_ Dante, though he couldn't betray the feeling or Vergil would think he was irritating Dante.

What had happened was that Vergil had demanded to be allowed to turn himself in.

The idea gave Dante nightmares. There were all sorts of ways to make human prisoners miserable. There were also a lot of things that were harmless to humans that were intensely uncomfortable to demons.

If Vergil had just, you know, had a nervous breakdown like Dante was expecting, he could have used that as an excuse to keep him here.

But Vergil had grown too strong for that.

On the one hand, a good thing, on the other, Dante wanted to take care of him.

Vergil didn't want to be protected from the consequences of his own actions, didn't want to be protected from _justice. _

He was handed over in the entry hall of the castle: much more imposing a place than Devil May Cry. Handed over by Sparda, not Dante, to invoke his mythos. They were shocked he was alive, but as Sparda pointed out, what they didn't know Mundus was less likely to find out.

Eyes that weren't impressed by Dante's rebel image were impressed by Sparda, as they had hoped. Sparda accompanied them back to their headquarters, Vergil allowing himself to be handcuffed, responding when they read him his rights.

A re-trial had already been agreed to.

So Dante had to wait. Wait until Sparda came home without Vergil. "How is he?"

"He is… silent, but well. They seem to wish to do this by the book. I sensed… hostility towards him by the demon-hunter guards, but that was to be expected. Others will watch them, to make sure he is not mistreated." Sparda sipped the tea, hands clasped around it. "His appearance helped. He is so young."

"He looked like he was being led to his execution."

"I hope, that… when the world, and not just us, forgives him, he will forgive himself. He is accepting of what he thinks is his fate." Sparda found that normal, and a hopeful sign.

"Will it be his fate?"

"If I had not been gone all this time… I knew the mentors of this generation, but not they themselves." Sparda shrugged. If he hadn't been gone, none of this would have happened. "I have the honor of my name, but few strings to pull. I hope I managed to convince Vergil not to ask to represent himself… He pled guilty to helping to raise the tower, but did say there were other factors in his statement, so it is not a matter of him wishing to die…"

"Well, that's an improvement."

Sparda sighed, clearly wishing he had been there.

While they spoke, Vergil ate dinner. The server had asked if he needed human blood: he'd said no, he ate normal food, amazed they thought otherwise. At least they were polite, not that he deserved it.

There were glares, and weapons pointed at him: he accepted it. After all, they had to be ready: only a slight glow would give him away if he was about to displace. The security measures were actually inadequate to defend the people in the room with him, though the wards on the walls were very well done.

He didn't actually consider breaking out.

This… this had been the other shoe dropping.

Father and Dante were biased by the guilt they felt. He couldn't trust their opinions of him.

Humans, however, had no reason to love him. They were impartial. If they said he had a right to live, then perhaps he did. And if he deserved to die, then this would end and he would have what he deserved.

Dante had been so afraid this news would break him. Instead, he felt… almost happy, anticipating.

"Mr. Von Schwärzung?"

It took him awhile to realize they were talking to him. "Yes? And please, call me Vergil. I've never been called that."

"Your lawyer is here."

Mr. Greenberg was an old man, someone Sparda had known, quite likely. He asked if he could tape the session: Vergil agreed. "What do you want to know?"

"Could you please start from the beginning? Why were you involved in all this business with the tower?"

Vergil sighed. "Because I knew Mundus was coming and that I wasn't strong enough to stop him myself." Admitting his weakness at the beginning… "So, I needed to gather demon allies, and when that failed I was approached by a man who claimed he could help me retrieve Father's sword."

"From what I understand, you had to break the seal in order to do so?"

"The seal would have failed soon in any case. It was meant to last for two thousand years, and if Mundus was destroyed, there would have been no need for a seal." He spoke like Dante would want him to, saying the facts and defending himself, instead of merely wallowing in guilt.

"So, you support your brother's statement that all of your criminal acts were motivated by the desire to save humanity?"

"Yes. They were wrong, but at the time I saw no other option." He should have looked harder. He didn't say that, however. He could imagine Dante knocking him upside the head for it.

"Now, Vergil, I'm going to ask you some of the questions the prosecution will likely ask you." The old man seemed to be relieved that he didn't have a suicidal client. Had he been warned he might? "Then we can go over the complete story."

It was a very long story.

"The court procedures for this will be a little odd because a case like this is unprecedented," Mr. Greenberg replied when asked what he thought the outcome would be. Vergil didn't want to know so much for himself as for Father and Dante, so he could take the correct tack in reassuring them. "Rescinding a death sentence has never been thought of. But… you're your father's son, so your heritage should even out."

And was that the best he could hope for? A balance between being hated as a demon and worshipped for his ancestry?

That was his and Dante's fate, though Dante at least had a name for himself as other than traitor.

He had never meant to betray his father. Never.


	36. Clio

_Disclaimer: Capcom owns Devil May Cry, not I. _

_Sorry this is so late! I haven't been feeling up to writing this fic, and I didn't want to give you guys any more inferior work. …let me know the damage, okay?_

_- _

_Clio_

_-_

"He's doing quite well," Sparda said quietly to Dante.

Dante restrained the urge to knock on wood. He didn't know that much about legal stuff, but it was pretty clear Sparda had done a good job picking Vergil's lawyer. He was asking questions that allowed Vergil to explain his actions, and he had clearly gone over this with Vergil before, so there wouldn't be any surprises.

"So you're saying you left Dante's custody in case there were buried compulsions to assassinate him and remove a key defender of humanity?"

"Yes," Vergil replied, a flicker of shame at his perceived weakness crossing his face, but holding together amazingly well.

"Weren't you worried that by doing so you might be placing innocent people in danger?" And the lawyer was also anticipating questions the prosecution might ask.

"I avoided people as much as possible, partly because even humans still… scared me." Vergil admitted that? Dante stared.

Part of the time he was aware of just how broken Vergil had been, and it seemed like he hadn't made any progress: now, here, seeing Vergil do so well under questions like these he had seemed like the old Vergil, strong and proud, yet even stronger for the ability to admit his weakness.

Then, hearing Vergil, _Vergil, _say humans had scared him pounded into Dante the depth to which his imprisonment had changed him.

"But," Vergil continued, rallying amazingly well, "I doubted Mundus would care about having me attack humans. The smart thing to do would have had me be utterly unaware that there was anything wrong with me, besides the trauma, until I attacked Dante, which was what I thought happened."

"What did you do when you were out on your own?"

"I wandered, but I went to apologize to Mary Arkham, who at first thought I was a son Dante had kept secret from her," a slight, somewhat strained smile: a far cry from Vergil's old smirk. Still, that he could find that, find anything, amusing under this pressure spoke volumes.

_Go Vergil! _Dante inwardly cheered him on.

"We will call Ms. Arkham, aka 'Lady' as a witness later, your honor," the lawyer said in an aside. "What else, Mr. von Schwärzung?"

The lawyer had been calling him by the family name all the way through. Besides being formal, it was different than calling him Vergil: the family name invoked Sparda's hard-earned reputation. Sparda just hoped that his deeds could help instead of hinder his son, for once.

"It finally occurred to me that the Guardian Clan, of Vie du Marli, might have some way of detecting if there were any spells on me. So I went to them."

"And did they find any?"

"No." He shook his head.

"And did you then return to Dante's custody?"

"I was… ashamed, afraid to, after worrying him. I felt that I had no right to claim his hospitality or family ties to him after my actions in raising Temen ni Gru and convincing him I was an enemy as part of my plan to gain Father's," he nodded at Sparda, "power."

"What made you return?"

"Despite my attempts to avoid them, I was ambushed by an A-class demon who spoke of Mundus still being active. I returned to warn Dante, who it turned out already knew." So his act of courage, of facing his brother, had been useless.

"And you remained there?"

"Yes."

"What did you do?"

"Mainly, I stayed home and helped with whatever I could, but on one occasion there was a call and no one to send out, so I went despite Dante having told me to keep my presence a secret."

"So, it was Dante's idea to keep your presence in the human world a secret, not your own?"

"Yes." Vergil nodded. "I was told that the secrecy was, like Father's, so that Mundus would not be able to find out I had been revived. If I had known that I had been sentenced, I would have preferred to face justice." He looked down at his hands, which Dante noticed were gripping the podium not quite hard enough to break the wood. "There was a long time during my recovery that I would have preferred death to my shame."

"What precisely were you ashamed about?"

"My weakness, in committing such crimes for the sake of the power to resist Mundus and failing to make them worth it: I gave away my honor for the sake of convincing Arkham that I was nothing but a power-hungry demon and he still was able to gain my father's power despite me. Without Dante's help I might not have been able to wrest it from him." Admitting _that? Vergil? _"And then I lost to Mundus, was broken so _easily_ and used to attack my own brother as his _puppet_," and there Dante saw the depth of Vergil's self-hate as he heard the wood crack.

Vergil removed his hands from the slightly splintered area. "My apologies." He bowed his head.

"Are you able to continue?" Or should he petition the judge for a recess, the lawyer was asking. "My apologies, your honor, the defendant is still fragile, as the psychological evaluation attests."

Dante noticed Sparda had winced and looked at him questioningly. "Giving them proof of his inhuman strength…" Sparda shrugged. Well, it couldn't be helped now.

"Yes, I will," Vergil nodded, and Dante hoped the humans watching had some understanding of what it cost Vergil to say these things, to lay himself bare like this, to continue for so long.

And this lawyer was going easy on him. The prosecution wasn't going to be so kind.

Someone was going to attack Vergil. Say horrible things about him and make him hurt inside: Dante would be able to _feel_ it. And he wouldn't be able to kill the person.

Some days, he really preferred dealing with demons. At least you were allowed to kill them.

Still… he had to have faith in Vergil, in the strength that had allowed him to regain himself. He had to have faith in his brother.


	37. Eirene

_Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry, Capcom does. _

_As you may have noticed, I did no research on court procedure, either UN or US, for this. My defense is that this is a special court, as this is semi-unprecedented. Or so we shall pretend, shall we?_

_Do you really want me to spend hours doing research that I could be spending to write this fic? _

_Yeah, I thought so. _

_- _

_Eirene_

_-_

"So, Mr. von Schwärzung, you are not claiming to be _innocent_ of any of the crimes in question?"

"No." Vergil shook his head.

"No, you are claiming that your actions, which besides raising the tower include several murders, albeit of people you claim were attacking you, are justified by some plot to defend humanity, which none of your actions point to you having any interest in doing?"

"Yes, I had to maintain the deception, or no sorcerer would have helped me."

"You claim this despite the fact that you are half-demon, and demons are, according to these documents, extremely bad at lying?"

"That would explain why Arkham planned to eliminate me, if he had seen through my deception, would it not?"

"He's doing great!" Dante whispered, amazed.

"Yet you deceived your own brother?"

"He was around me much less, and he had no reason to suspect I was trying to trick him, except a few words on the tower."

"Those words?"

"Without power, you cannot protect anything. Though perhaps he didn't hear them, as he was run through at the time."

Dante chuckled. Vergil! Instead of being intimidated, being confronted instead of coddled seemed to be making him stronger, more like his old self. Maybe Dante should have been rougher on him.

"You ran him through?"

"Not fatally, he was in no danger." Vergil shrugged. "I would have made sure he was in no condition to follow me, as was the plan so he would be safe, but Arkham interrupted."

"You attacked him instead of telling him your plan and having him act?"

"His act would hardly have been enough to convince Arkham." Vergil shook his head. "I didn't want to take any risks, not so close to my goal."

"A goal for which you violated dozens of laws and broke your own Father's seal."

"In fact, I only attempted to break it, Arkham was the one who broke it. Everything he told me was a ruse to gain my help and my blood." Couldn't the lawyer even get his facts right?

Sparda sighed. "Not too arrogant, Vergil," he whispered in hopes that his son's keen ears would hear him. "Even if he is a fool."

A slight nod. Whispers carried farther than just speaking softly, as Dante and Sparda had taken care to do so far.

Despite the practical aspects of the matter, Vergil's ability to consider others foolish enough to mock them despite being convinced he himself was a fool was a very good sign.

This was Vergil's way to set the record straight, to be judged by someone not related to him, someone not foolish enough to love him, and he wanted all the facts to be known, to go to his grave without shame if that was what the impartial judge decided.

Finally, the questions petered out and the judge called Lady to the stand to renew her testimony.

Which wasn't good. She had to admit, as did Dante later, that they had both been convinced that Vergil was evil as all hell at the time, though they both had changed their minds later. Dante winced as he left the podium. "I'm probably going to be on trial next, for not turning him in." He'd probably get off with just a fine. If Vergil's sentence was lifted.

Dante was trying not to be nervous. He was _never _nervous.

Sparda also gave his testimony, that Vergil had indeed been severely damaged by his torture, torture that he would not have received if he truly had been willing to serve Mundus. The faint of heart had to leave the room when Sparda was asked to tell the court what he judged had been done to Vergil. The traditional punishments for the families of traitors were not for the ears of human children, and coupled with Mundus' hate… "There are scars upon his mind and soul with which marks upon the body do not compare. Those can be healed in seconds for our kind: other pain lingers, though as I have said they would have hurt his body as much as they could." Sparda bowed his head, ashamed at his inability to defend his children.

"And you were not conscious during the events of the tower?"

Sparda shook his head. "I sensed a sorcerer approaching the sword and was preparing to test him. After that, nothing until the amulets were joined after Dante recovered Vergil on Mallet Island, and even that is… like a dream.

But my kind are empaths, and Vergil has been honest with me and you all: he truly was trying to follow in my footsteps despite my own fate and his inexperience."

"Thank you, Sparda." Now, they used the one-word name, when it was one with such a legend behind it. There had been chatter and noises of disbelief when the others spoke: now, there was respectful silence as most present took their first look at one who was, once again, a living legend.

And the testimony was finished: time for the closing arguments, as the physical evidence had already been reviewed.

They were allowed to see Vergil again, finally, with the bailiff standing a respectful distance away. Sparda embraced him. "You were wonderful, son. Surely they will see."

"If you say so, Father, but the prosecutor was right. I am guilty."

Dante chuckled. "Think about it: the road, or in this case, portal to hell was paved, or raised, with good intentions."

Sparda looked at him askance for the joke but Vergil knew Dante better and smiled. "Thank you, Dante."

Dante patted him on the shoulder, not wanting to be too physically affectionate in front of witnesses. He had a macho image to uphold, after all. "It'll be okay, Vergil." Though there were no higher courts to appeal this to, not with jurisdiction over demon cases. The decision here was likely final. Too bad the judge was shielded: no chance of reading what he was likely to decide, and Dante sucked at reading people sans empathy, which he actually didn't use most of the time since it wasn't fair to humans. Had to work on that, he noted for the umpteenth time.

Finally, time for the decision. They filed into the court and took their places.


	38. Themis

_Disclaimer: Capcom owns Devil May Cry, not I._

I've decided to end the Angel Saga with this, the last chapter of Angel Halo. Why?

I started out writing this because I had a plotbunny and people said they would like to see a fic to that bunny. Now, however, I've lost the urge to write this and it's become more of a chore than fun. I've kept writing it because people indicated they wanted to read more and I like to make people happy.

Now, however, it seems my lack of enthusiasm is negatively influencing the writing and people are not liking the fic as much anymore due to this. How do I know? The only way a writer knows what her readers want is that review box.

So, if I'm not having fun writing it and you're not having fun reading it, there's no point in doing the last two story arcs. I might eventually write them anyway, when I'm feeling better, as I want to do an 'everyone against Mundus' plot and an 'Eva is revived' plot, but not for the foreseeable future, sorry everyone who was looking forward to them. Hopefully better quality would make up for the delay.

-

_Themis_

-

Everyone was here.

The large courtroom was packed: so much for secret proceedings. Even Matier had somehow found out about this, and was sitting in a front row seat flanked by serious redheads. She maintained her usual equanimity, her experience rendering her undisturbed by even a bomb going off above her head, but Lucia's expression indicated that Vie du Marli would take action if anything happened to her friend.

Dante remembered the belief in a lot of cultures that red hair indicated demonic ancestry or nature, and wondered if it was true, because what were the odds? Wasn't it a recessive gene, from what he remembered of what Eva had taught them about genetics, or something, in normal humans?

Unless Matier had chosen a red-haired escort to make it clear they were all Guardian Clan members and all capable of kicking ass and taking names, if the victim in question had a name at all.

…Which was completely irrelevant to the matter at hand, but Dante hated waiting, even though he'd had to do it for years before Trish had walked into his office.

"Trish, stop biting your nails."

Trish noticed and stopped. She'd just had the urge to bite _something, _and the people organizing this trial were off-limits. She'd given her testimony too, about how Vergil had been treated and how he had definitely been no ally of Mundus, not willing anyway, and what bad shape he had been in when Dante had rescued… both of them.

She had almost wound up crying again, and a lot of the people in the courtroom had.

Still, not really understanding that humans had pity, she worried that she hadn't made herself clear enough, managed to fully get across that Vergil was (mostly) innocent.

So was Dante, even though he was better informed about human nature.

Dante was also worried about the mechanics of the execution, if it happened. Like, if they only destroyed his body, who got custody of the devil arm? If the UN tried to guard it, ten to one Mundus' forces would manage to steal it. If not, and they destroyed the devil arm as well, Vergil's soul would go to the Underworld and if Mundus managed to find it before the whole reincarnation thing happened (and a soul so powerful and so laden with suffering would shine like a beacon), Dante would _also_ have to go rescue Vergil. Again.

He'd made the argument that an execution would be depriving humanity of a defender and possibly giving Mundus a free warrior (and victim). He just wasn't counting on these people to see sense.

Vergil was just standing there, in that proud way that made you not notice the heavily-enspelled chains, utterly neutral and composed. Waiting, like they all were.

Dante wished weapons not giving testimony were allowed in the courtroom. He could seriously use Nevan's whispered comments right about now.

"All rise."

Finally!

There was a small speech about how this was totally unprecedented, yadda yadda yadda, that Dante actually listened to, hoping to hear clues as to the verdict. Damn judge keeping them in suspense.

Okay, here we go.

"The defendant, Vergil von Schwärzung, is found guilty of all particulars but innocent of high treason against humanity."

In other words, yeah, he'd done the property damage and seal breaking, but he hadn't done so to get humanity conquered.

Which meant he was innocent of the big one, and wasn't going to get executed.

"The sentence is commuted to a fine, which has already been covered by his brother, and the twenty-year-jail term will be changed to supervision by his family and community service, the amount to be worked out by the US government."

In other words, Vergil would be working off his lesser crimes by killing demons. Which wasn't entirely a bad thing, not like any of them really needed the money.

The jail term, which he'd actually forgotten about, had been assessed for the mundane damaged in the same spirit to which people were sentenced to two life sentences, one of which they couldn't serve. Vergil could still have been made to go to jail for that time. He tried to imagine Vergil in prison clothes. Weren't they _orange_ nowadays? The mind boggled.

The image wasn't necessary to make him smile, anyway. Relief did the trick. The judge had to pause as a cheer went up. Lucia was particularily enthusiastic, Dante noted, and wondered what had gone on while Vergil was there. Had to get the details out of him later. Vergil could use a girlfriend.

He'd always needed to get laid… not important right now.

The chains were being taken off his brother, finally, and Vergil was finally, finally free, a free man both among demons and humans.

Would Vergil finally believe, now that humanity had confirmed it, that he was a good guy?

Vergil turned to look at him (Dante had glanced at him occasionally while the judge was talking, and Vergil must have felt his gaze but hadn't turned to meet it) finally, and Dante grinned.

Vergil looked years older and more composed already, his outer appearance a reflection of his inner state and confidence, or so Sparda had explained.

Dante had looked older than he really was when he was fourteen, so had Vergil. Recently, Vergil had gone back to the way he looked then, it had been weird and Dante had wondered what the hell was up with that until Dad told him.

He looked, now, like he had when both of them had braved the tower and the hell it led to.

He looked ready to take on an entire world, just like he had then. Ready to face down anything and anyone.

Oooh, Lucia and Trish were hugging each other. Just because they were like little sisters to him didn't mean they weren't hot chicks. He could do without the crying though.

"Come on, let's celebrate! Back to my place, I've got drinks!" he called out.


	39. Kiriban: Chorus

_Disclaimer: Capcom owns Devil May Cry, not I. Nor do I make any money off this. _

_Yes, I knew I said I was putting this story on hold. But I like to thank my reviewers by writing things for those who write landmark reviews, and Court12 wrote the three thousandth review I currently have archived on fanfiction . net (not counting ones deleted for various reasons, like when Rapture got reorganized). They requested a chapter of _Angel Saga, _and so I am delivering. Speaking of which, this fic is coming up on its two hundredth review. Be sure to be logged in or give an e-mail so I can contact you to ask what you want if you are that reviewer! _

_-_

_Chorus_

_-_

"You did great, Vergil. Really great." Dante had hugged him then, Vergil remembered, so _proud…_ Dante had once been proud of him like that all the time.

But this wasn't time to dwell on astonishing things, or things that were past and gone. Now was time to atone.

Even though Dante griped about it, this Community Service wasn't something Vergil wanted to appeal. Having some punishment made everything feel more just. Performing penance for his sins.

Even if fighting demons on his own still made him nervous. He had to overcome that, he told himself, if he was ever going to be worthy of his family again. True, there were humans as backup, watching him, but most of them were ineffectual, and certainly not able to stand up against anything he couldn't take down.

And they kept trying to give him _directions._ "There are some in the building behind you," a voice said, coming from his headset.

"I know," Vergil answered, and continued to stalk forwards towards the suspiciously convenient area of rubble and _sand. _

"Then why are you," but the voice stilled as demons manifested from the sand and, with a swipe of Yamato, vanished as quickly as they had appeared.

Really. Even a human hunter who couldn't see the demonic spirits waiting to manifest would have realized that this area was a trap waiting to be sprung. Did these 'handlers' of his have no experience whatsoever? "I will kill the ones in the building now," he informed them, to at least be polite.

"Ah, okay."

This area appeared to be a workshop for someone specializing in garden furniture, the cement statues of gnomes and such. Vergil had always found them half creepy, half annoying. Dante had viewed them as one more thing to climb on. And jump up and down on their heads.

Ah, memories.

Now, the possessed gnomes tried to entangle him in fishing line. He snorted, twirling Yamato so the wind sent the light lines back to their senders. Pitiful.

As long as he kept telling himself how easy, how ridiculous this was, he wasn't as afraid.

Though that was foolish. He shouldn't underestimate even these weak demons.

Hopefully his paranoia would keep him from that deadly sin.

Calm. He took a deep breath, remembering his training.

-

"The monitors in his headset show his breathing rhythm just changed, no, it's back to normal," one of the agents in the truck reported.

"So he took a deep breath to calm down?" That was the most human thing he'd done since they'd started monitoring him. No matter what, his heart rate, body temperature, breathing stayed constant. He didn't even sweat, not even after a workout that would have a normal human about to keel over and die.

"Probably," the analyst reported. "I don't think… there doesn't normally seem to be a connection between his mental stress level and his body's reactions. But he was trained classically and that includes meditation. Hence, he would think that deep breathing would cause calmness, even if it might not work that way for him. So a placebo effect, maybe?" He frowned. This was all being recorded, so he was thinking aloud for the record.

"His breathing's too perfect. Normal people need to take a deeper than normal breath every so often: they program it into artificial respirators. Maybe this was just that? But no, he would have taken one before…" the physical analyst piped up.

"I think this is evidence that fighting demons is indeed affecting his mental state. You remember that he was seriously traumatized."

This was the first evidence of it that they'd seen. So far, Vergil had just been… a perfect killing machine.

"How did he know the demons would appear there?" the one handling communications asked.

The retired hunter who they had on retainer piped up, "Half-breeds can see demons before they take physical shape. So he might have seen a few hanging around there, waiting to manifest. Not to mention that place was a good spot for them."

"Should we ask about the breath?"

"I don't know. He might be twitchy about his pride still. We could ask about the demons, though. How he knew they would show up there."

"Oh, he's done."

"Replay that last bit."

Vergil had crouched, then spun, and seven concrete possessed statues were nothing but rubble, almost too fast for the high-speed camera to catch the blur. "Not a scratch on the sword, either." A whistle. They could _use_ an alloy like that.

"Are there any more in the area, Vergil?"

Vergil cocked his head, listening, then shook it. "No. Should I come and debrief?"

Writing reports and being monitored were part of the community service, allowed as long as they didn't take any genetic samples or anything that would invade privacy. Vergil knew the headset was monitoring his vital signs. So, had he forgotten that when he drew that breath, not cared, or…

The diplomatic hell that would arise if they _hadn't_ told him and Sparda found out wasn't worth thinking about.

"Yes, please." And the radio was shut off. "That took him, what, fifteen minutes? It's going to take three times as long for us to get done asking him questions."

"Well, he probably enjoys killing demons, and community service isn't supposed to be fun," the commander pointed out. "Anyway, the more we drag out the 'boring bit' the sooner his hours are up."

He, personally, had been picked for this because he was pretty sure Sparda's family were good guys. Two thousand years on earth and no taking it over was a pretty good sign. Still, just because _Vergil_ wasn't going to teleport right past the secret service and take out the president didn't mean others would be that decent.

Now that Mundus had revived, they _needed_ a threat assessment. Luckily, few demons were on Sparda's level. But there were more where Mundus had found Sparda…

-

"How was it, Vergil?"

Vergil silently thanked Dante for being touchy-feely around him. It meant Vergil didn't need to ask for a hug and feel ashamed.


	40. Kiriban: Reminder

_Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry, Capcom does. Nor do I profit from writing this fanfiction. _

_This is a gift for BlackLadyCharon, who wrote the 200__th__ review of _Angel Saga_. She requested another chapter, with comforting, and here it is! _

_And, seeing as there's all this interest and summer vacation is coming up soon, _Angel Saga _is now officially on hiatus instead of complete. There's an offer up on my profile for fic in exchange for art, and an artist requested that I do Eva's resurrection scene, which means I will start sooner than planned, so expect another chapter next week, and feel free to bug me if there isn't one! _

_-_

_Intermission - Reminder_

_- _

"Dante, may I speak to you for a moment?" Sparda pulled Dante aside from his conversation with Trish about their own hunting business. She'd been doing most of the work at Devil May Cry during the drama of the trial, thank goodness. She was the best of them at acting human. Well, Nevan could, but she liked to be a little demonic, and that wasn't reassuring to people who had just been scared out of their wits.

"Sure, Pop-Dad." Dante felt that Sparda deserved something more formal than Pop but less than Vergil's Father. Dad was sort of affectionate without being Daddy, which was for little kids.

"How much have you been holding Vergil?" was the question Sparda posed.

Dante considered it. "Not that much. He doesn't seem to be needing it too much, though I have been hugging him sometimes. He seems a little uncomfortable with it, though, so I've been easing off." Even though, as Dad had explained, it was natural and okay for him to want to hold Vergil: he had years of no contact with his twin to make up for.

"I think he is uncomfortable because he, like you, feels that now he is 'better' he should not want 'childish' affection." Sparda clearly felt this was foolish. "Now that he is so improved, he needs reinforcement that this is a positive change. If he lacks it, he may feel that he needs to be childish, damaged, for us to love him."

"Ouch." Dante winced.

Sparda nodded.

"Okay, I'll go hunt him down and tackle him." Dante turned to go find Vergil.

"Yes, that would be an excellent idea."

"Uh, I didn't mean that literally," Dante replied, turning back to Sparda with an arched eyebrow. "Wouldn't that scare him?"

"Not if you made it clear that it was just a play-fight. You two could use a good wrestle." Sparda smiled reminiscently. "My twin and I… well, that was millennia ago, and we were pure devils while you two are hybrids, but we play-fought constantly, and so did you as children. We were always prying you apart. Sometimes you were so into it that one of you bit us by accident."

"Sorry about that."

"It was quite all right, although we had to discipline you for it."

"With the shotgun?"

"A small-caliber gun, at that age." Sparda shook his head. "I'll tell you more stories after you find Vergil, perhaps?"

"Okay, Dad." Dante headed to the living room.

Vergil was channel-surfing: he'd been encouraged to watch TV to catch up on what people were talking about and doing right now, instead of some time in the past like in books. Dante sat down next to him and put his arms around him.

Vergil blinked at him, but didn't protest.

"Dad said to," Dante explained, getting comfortable. Okay, okay, he was snuggling. Here he was, in his early thirties, and snuggling, for crying out loud. Of course, thirties was probably still infancy for a devil.

"…Oh."

"That doesn't mean I don't want to," Dante assured him seeing Vergil's downcast look. "It's just that you looked uncomfortable when I did it, and I thought it was because you didn't want it, not because you felt weird about it." He thought for a second. "If it helps, I feel weird about it. Grown men," well, Vergil wasn't exactly looking very grown, just late teens, which looked like a kid to Dante nowadays, "don't exactly do this. But, I got it through my thick skull that I _am_ half-demon and I have to accept that years ago." He shrugged. "So, this is a devil thing to do.

Vergil nodded, resting his head against Dante. "It, it reminds me. Of before."

Before Eva died and everything went to hell. "I hear you, bro." Dante squeezed him. "So, how's the hunting going?"

"Nothing but simple demons, so far."

"If they send you against a hard one, I'll have their heads," Dante growled. "Just a few hours of community service isn't enough to cover that. I charge extra for them. If they try to rip you off, let me know, okay?"

"I'm able to handle harder demons, Dante. I got the new devil arm, remember?"

"I know, but it's a matter of principle. And we negotiated the terms. If you come up against anything tougher than a Phantom, it's because they screwed up." Dante grinned. "We might be able to get better terms if they do, so let me know, or really, let Father know. He's the guy with all the experience at handling people, even if he's awkward, sort of, around us."

"He is?" Vergil blinked at him.

Dante blinked back. "Well, you kind of… aren't the best at people skills either, so you might not have noticed. I think he's fighting the impulse to grab us, put us in a nest, and build fortifications around it. I mean, we're babies to him, and we went through some pretty bad shit. Not to mention that he's beating himself up over it."

"He shouldn't."

"You know that, I know that, but he doesn't _feel _that. People aren't logical, Vergil."

"They should be."

"Coulda, shoulda, woulda." Dante shrugged.

"What?"

"Basically, that would be nice but it's not the way things are, so no point thinking about it." He was having to explain all sorts of phrases to Vergil, some of which he remembered from Mom using them. Was Vergil's memory still that spotty? Or was he avoiding thinking about the happy times for some reason?

Vergil snuggled against him, face turned away from the babbling television. "This is nice."

"Yeah," Dante agreed, smiling broadly. Vergil was warm, and he always felt sleepy like this, Vergil next to him and Sparda a few rooms away: not alone, and protected. With his family. He let his eyes close when he noticed Vergil's already were.

Elsewhere, feeling his children drift off to sleep Sparda's eyes opened. His hands gently held the amulet. _Our children. _

_Love, _he dimly felt from the tiny, drifting human soul.

_Love, _he sent back. _Soon, soon. _

Soon they would all be together.


	41. VI Angel Blessings: Thalia

_Disclaimer: I own nothing related to Devil May Cry, Capcom does. Nor do I make any money from writing this fanfic. _

_This is dedicated to Gabriel-chaos from livejournal, who drew wonderful art of Eva (check my profile) and asked for Eva's revival scene in exchange. This gave me the impetus to write this chapter ahead of schedule, and officially take _Angel Saga _off hiatus, so everyone thank her! _

Someone else sent me art, but they used a PM, and ff . net deleted the links and html. Could that person e-mail me instead? My e-mail is linked from my profile. Or they could comment to my livejournal, which is linked as my homepage, if that works better.

_I'm currently offering fic in exchange for art trades. Contact me for details. Note: I'm going to be updating Angel Saga anyway, on whatever schedule I can, so you don't have to ask for chapters just to advance the plot. There are going to be 13 more chapters minimum to complete the story, and you might want to ask for something even more to your liking that's not going to happen in this story, like a specific pairing… However, you can indeed ask for sidestories or extra scenes, if you feel so inclined. _

_- _

_Angel Blessings - Thalia_

_- _

What delayed the spell hadn't been lack of supplies: he, like the dragons some said all devils were, had hoarded several armies' worth of red orbs, literally. Eva had put a sizeable dent in his collection of gold orbs, but there still were enough: neither Dante nor Vergil had touched his supplies during his… unwilling absence.

What had delayed him casting this spell had been both his desire to return to something approximating full strength before casting it, just in case, and the need to make sure the object of the spell understood the side effect. Well, side effect_s_, but there was one important one.

There was no way of adapting the spell Dante had used to call Vergil out of the sword to humans: it fundamentally didn't work for beings of the realm of light, who operated under different natural laws regarding their spirits. It worked on Vergil as well as Sparda because Vergil was part demon, and that qualified.

For Eva to be called out of the amulet, she had to be 'reclassified' as a demon. Luckily, that was a matter of the magic of names and he was a specialist in the field. So it was far simpler for him to make her a demon than for a human to try to do the same. Not a matter of mutation or filling the human soul with power it wasn't equipped to handle, but, metaphorically speaking, taking a correction pen and replacing Eva the being of light with Eva the being of light and darkness in harmony (so the light didn't overwhelm the darkness and make it not count).

However, this was a rather drastic change, and one she had refused while alive. No matter how much he wanted her back, he would rather have her half-asleep and happy than awake and betrayed.

So, Sparda had needed to make sure this was okay with Eva. That had been rather difficult to do, as it was a complicated concept for a dreaming mind and he was still only ninety percent sure she understood it fully.

But, his lady was getting impatient for life, and her wish was his command, and he just hoped she knew what she was wishing for.

Well, she couldn't stay angry at him forever. Surely killing him a few times would take the edge off any irritation.

Surely.

He told himself the reasons he hadn't told the children about the prospect of bringing their mother back were that he had wanted to surprise them, not disappoint them if the first attempt was a failure (he was going to try to change Eva the minimum possible for it to count).

Not to mention that he hadn't done this resurrection ritual in ages. Yamato hadn't wanted it, nor Rebellion, and the other devil arms went straight into the vault.

There was also the fact that it would take Eva some time to regain… well, he shouldn't be pessimistic. It was just that there had supposedly been a secret to making a human a 'god' and he didn't know it, though he thought he might have an idea. She _should _have access to all her memories… Dante would never forgive him if something terrible happened to her.

Not that that mattered: he would never forgive himself. He loved his children, but Eva was Eva.

Time to begin.

The diagram had been checked and re-checked, the amulet was in position, the payment was ready to be taken, and all it needed was what every important spell seemed to need: his blood.

All of it was a small price to pay.

There was nothing left to do, he was only delaying.

A sharp pain, and then a golden light shone from the amulet. It grew larger, and then he fell over.

No, he hadn't just fallen, something had hit him.

_Hello! _There was a hard, edged, but small form on top of him: he looked down at it, bemused. Certainly not Eva's curves, but a mind voice somewhat like he had imagined Eva's to be, only… younger?

She looked like he and his twin had looked when they were… only without the horns of a male.

Of course! He had used himself as a pattern, and when she became a devil, she did it staying as much herself as possible, which meant the spell had treated her as her chronological age, which mean she had become a child!

The interaction of human and devil mental states should accelerate her mental evolution and hence her aging and powers… oh, my. He would need to teach her, and _fast. _Well, he needed to make sure the children knew everything they needed to in any case, he'd been giving them lessons since he resurrected… Hadn't he been childlike at first? It was somewhat of a blur…

_Dearest. _The nestling had scooted up to lie on his chest and pet his head. _Mine. Mine! Mine, mine mine… _It was a little song. _Happy, mine, happy is mine, mine is happy… _She bounced up and down on his chest in time with the thoughts, wings scraping against each other with a sound like a cricket's chirp, which was an excited and cheerful sound.

Well, she seemed to already be up to simple sentences and concept reversal… _Eva?_

She, it, cocked her head. _Mine?_

_Yes, yours. _

That appeared to settle it.

He wrapped an arm around her and picked her up. She snuggled against his chest, then attempted to climb up onto his head. She was a little too big to fit there comfortably, but he managed to get her braced on his shoulder and headed for the stairs when the door opened.

"Dad?"

Eva's wings flared and she hissed. _Mine! Other nestling go away! Am older, will eat you if you try to take Mine! _

"…the hell?" Dante asked. "Dad, since when do I have a sister? Besides Trish, I mean. Wait a minute, is that Trish?"

"No, this is," Sparda tried to restrain Eva, who was trying to fly out of his hold and attack. "This is your mother."

"…the hell?"


	42. Aglaea

_Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry, Capcom does. Nor am I making any money from this free advertising I am doing. _

_Fic-for-art trading is still open! But this isn't a trade chapter, this is a regular update. Any _Angel Saga_ side chapters requested will not be posted until after Angel Blessings is concluded so they will not interfere with the actual plot, okay? Though I will send them to the recipient as soon as they are finished for approval. _

_Note! Should I ever make a website, you must be willing to have your art displayed on it, with whatever form of credit/links you want, of course. _

_- _

_Aglaea_

_-_

"So you tried to revive Mother and she ended up like when we revived you?" Dante stared at the little gold struggling… thing.

"Not for the same reasons. I became a nestling because I was starved of power, left with too little to maintain an adult body and mind: she has become a nestling because this is her true form as a demon, because of her age."

"And she's older than us. So we'd be even smaller if we were full demons?" Wow. No wonder Sparda was amazed that they'd survived. Wait a second. "Why is she a demon at all."

"Not a full demon, approximately half. But I doubt she will be able to take human form for awhile."

_Let go of me! Now! _The nestling demanded. _Other nestling is being bad! Go away, other nestling, or will bite you! _The little mouth opened, displaying tiny fangs that both Sparda and Dante found incredibly cute.

"Sparda, that wasn't what I was… okay, why is she a half demon, then?"

"She had to be for me to revive her. I had her consent first." Oh, he hoped so, or he was a liar as well as a traitor.

"Gold orbs work on humans," Dante objected.

"Only ones with at least a trace of demon in their bloodline. And for a gold orb to work, it has to activate in the instant a person dies. Eva had been dead for decades, making this far more complex," Sparda explained.

"Okay. So then why doesn't she recognize me? You did."

"She is acting on her new instincts, which say that other nestlings which are not one's twin are enemies. She probably does know you on some level, but… she doesn't have the experience necessary to keep her instincts from controlling her, or the concentration either." _Milady, wait! Other nestling is yours! _

_Mine? _She made a little confused noise, her struggles ceasing momentarily. _Is mine. But is too close! Is trying to take Dearest-Mine! _A teeny growl. _But is mine… _

Sparda hugged her, not coincidently getting a tighter grip on her. _Is younger nestling. Is small and edible. Not a threat! _

_Is not twin, but is… Is Mine. _She nodded. _Changed mind! Other nestling, come here! _

"Is she going to try to eat me?" Dante's mind boggled.

"I think she wants to investigate you," Sparda answered.

And so she did, sniffing Dante and climbing on him.

"Good thing I came down here and not Vergil." Vergil would have been horribly hurt to be rejected by his own mother. Worse, he would have thought he deserved that rejection.

Sparda's eyes widened. "Indeed." He should have locked the door, but he hadn't thought anyone else would have come down here, and a locked door merited investigating to Dante's mind. He was starting to learn how his own son thought, at least.

_Mines, _Eva said happily. _I have many Mines. _

_Greedy, _Sparda chided her.

_Yes. _Happy Eva. _Feed me! _

_Love, _Sparda sent her.

She cuddled against him and drank greedily. _Good mine. _

"When will she be able to become human?"

"Once she does, she will be able to think with her human brain and she will cease to be so childlike. However, she has to learn how to shapeshift first. I think she is barely old enough to use that ability, so it is just a matter of making her understand how." Sparda smiled. "I could teach you two at the same time."

"It would be nice if Vergil could control how he looked deliberately." As it was, his unconscious shifting meant that Vergil's mental state could be read by his apparent age. Sad Vergil was bad enough. Sad fourteen-year-old Vergil was heartbreaking to see. But at least it was a good warning sign. "If he doesn't age normally, or at least seem to, he can't go out in public much."

"That is why I chose white hair." Sparda nodded. "Otherwise, when I was of an age to go gray, I would have been forced to change the colors of hairs one at a time."

"That would take forever."

"Indeed it would." How was Eva going to manage? He doubted she would give up her golden locks. She loved the fact that they were the sun to his moon. His poetic lady…

His poetic Lady who was currently nuzzling his hand, clearly wanting to be petted, and broadcasting happiness and contentment much more clearly than she had as a human. On one level, he wanted her to stay like this, oblivious of the sadness and tragedy that his kind, the kind she now partially was, had brought upon her.

But he would miss her sharp mind, her fire, her… he would miss her, the Eva he had known. How much had the years of his absence changed her? He wanted to find out. He wanted to pick up where they had left off, to once again have that happiness, that togetherness, with each other and their children.

"Can I hold her?" Dante asked.

"You should ask her." Though he was loathe to give her up, even temporarily.

_Mother?_ Dante spoke in the demonic way, as he rarely did.

_Yes? _She answered, purring as Sparda petted her head. As a female, she had no horns: as a young nestling, she had only one pair of wings instead of his six. Otherwise, she looked very much as he and his twin had. Such a lovely golden color… she would be beautiful when she matured.

Though likely she would only be able to take adult form for short periods for centuries, as his children did now only to fight. That form burned up much more energy.

As soon as possible, he would have to watch her fight, teach her these new powers, see her joy at them, see her in her glory as one of his kind. For the first time he would find her physically attractive in more than an academic way: humans were too different, soft, for him to be attracted to them.

Though would she feel that now he only loved her for her body?

_Want to stay with Dearest mine. Other is dear, you are dearest. _Her words comforted him. He should not think of the future, go borrowing trouble.

_I love you, _he told her, as he had wanted to for so long.


	43. Paris

_3/4/11 – Finally updated after three years & nine months! I was going to post this next week, after I posted the last chapter of the Star Ocean 3 fic I'm working on, but I had writer's block on that one. If I miss a week, it will be because I got that done & am posting it. Otherwise, this will update weekly._

_The hiatus was because I lost my notes on how I was realistically going to have Vergil recover in time to face Mundus in the next section. Obviously, that was hard to do and involved inflicting a certain trauma on him… I eventually decided that it would be more realistic to have a longer, even more drawn-out recovery process anyway._

_This chapter is dedicated to SoDesuKa, because she did fanart. I also owe Djibriel a lot of fics for the same reason, so you can probably consider the rest of the fic dedicated to her unless it's a kiriban chapter. Also, SoDesuKa's specific request was Sparda telling the twins about their childhood. I will try to have more of that soon._

_In the interim, DMC4 came out and seemed to verify the theory that Vergil's psyche got shattered by the whole thing, but then there's the official explanation of Nero, which makes no fucking sense. Vergil? The king of halfbreed issues, having a quarterbreed kid? The other one has bells on. Now Dante, he would have made a lot of sense, given that in the novels the makers of 2&3 were shamelessly ripping plot and characters from he had amnesia for a bit & was having sex with random women during that time period. Frankly, the canon character most likely to have Dante's baby is named Kerry. Any author of a next-gen fic where Dante had to deal with her kid would win the internet for doing their homework._

_Warning: I've seen the cutscenes, but I still haven't played DMC4 since I bought the PS3 copy assuming I would soon own a PS3 and still don't. In the interim, shiny RPGs came out and I am still incapable of pulling off the most basic combos, so it will be awhile. I may make a few references to DMC4 or the anime, but this fic is obviously AU of them, in terms of the events, and probably won't be compatible in terms of all the new background material. Also, apparently Kamiya decided to confirm something in Bayonetta that was actually hinted at in the book that came with the DMC1 sound DVD: you know the priestess?_

_She was _Eva._ Suddenly, the fact that she was became the leader of Sparda's rebellion in the alternate universe and Dante remarks that the Eva there is the same as the one he knew makes additional sense._

_While Kamiya had nothing to do with DMC2+, applying fridge logic means that either Lady is a descendant of Eva from a previous relationship (husband killed by demons?) or she's a descendant of Sparda and Arkham didn't know that part. Otherwise, he wouldn't have needed Dante or Vergil's blood. Either way, she's Dante's several-dozen-generations-removed niece._

_While this josses all my Eva stuff, unless I handwave it with reincarnation (and ignore the fact I tended to write the priestess as a Roman version of Lady so that she wouldn't be an OC), it's still awesome. I just can't use it in this fic._

_Since I have been out of the DMC fandom for ages, if anyone has fic recs, especially novelfic (Grue vs. zombies!) or Bayonetta-inspired witch/priestess!Eva, I would be very grateful. I am also going to be incredibly rusty, since I have to not just write the DMC characters but the DMC characters post-several chapters of Angel Saga character development. Please bear with and provide concrit? _

_The chapter is named not for Paris the city, but Paris, "the firebrand, who burnt down the walls of Troy."_

* * *

As glad as he was to see Eva again, and as glad as Vergil would be, Sparda knew Dante was right. Vergil should not see her, not until she was settled in and less likely to forget that she'd decided Dante was hers instead of an edible rival. Acceptance of Dante would extend to Vergil, since he was Dante's twin.

Yet, if they didn't let Vergil know about Eva, he would see that as some kind of rejection, in his current state. So he needed to get Eva settled in, secure according to nestling-logic, and do it quickly.

He could _try _defining the entire castle as her nest, she could sense the enchantments now, but they had guests, friends or otherwise, visiting often enough, and he knew what _his _response would have been to having his nest invaded, even if that had never happened when he was a nestling.

The obvious solution was to set up a nest in his quarters, where she would feel guarded. He could give her a little time to settle in, while Dante told Vergil she had returned. Knowing Vergil, he would need to prepare himself before seeing her again, and that would give him time to prepare Eva.

Dante agreed with the plan, but they ran into the first snag when Eva snagged his coat and wouldn't let go. Dante considered taking off his coat, but he knew she'd just grab his pants. Or his skin.

_Mine stays_, she said, and it was weirdly nostalgic to feel that dimly-remembered looming threat of parental killing intent. The kind that had let them know Mom was _serious_, because if they did something, like wander around loose, they would be in danger of getting hurt, and if they got hurt, Mom was going to _kill them_. Or make use of a shotgun loaded with rocksalt just to hammer in that taking stupid risks hurt and they should damn well know better than to do things that were going to result in certain death or pain.

Dante looked at Sparda, and discovered what many children before him already had: it was useless to appeal to paternal authority to avoid the wrath of Mom. Although most fathers didn't look all lovey-dovey at the prospect of getting to watch their wives kill things.

Even if the idea was to _prevent _Eva from trying, or threatening, to kill Dante or Vergil.

Arguing with her wouldn't have been very productive, since she was running on instinct and emotion currently, so it was faster for Dante to give in and accompany the two of them to their old rooms, Eva perching on Sparda's head, moving to his shoulder, jumping over to Dante, clinging to his coat with her claws and flying around them. It couldn't really be said that she was studying them or the halls they passed through when her short-term memory and general thinking capacity didn't seem to be hooked up yet. They could feel she was taking things in, although Sparda was the only one able to tell that she was idly doing things like evaluating how practical it would be to cling to the ceilings or climb the walls.

"That's a good sign," Sparda remarked, watching her fly ahead a bit and try to pry a torch-holder that had been converted to hold a vase from the wall. He was glad they'd removed the holy water booby traps once Dante and Vergil had shown signs of nearing the exploratory stage, otherwise she might have gotten herself killed that way.

"What is? Redecorating?" Dante remembered moving a lot, as a child. One of the first things Eva would do was case the place, examining the layout for utility and defensibility. He had always looked forward to that since if she wanted a wall taken out, or to tear the whole place down and start over, he and Vergil got to play wrecking balls.

"Her developmental stage is advanced enough that she's examining her surroundings for escape potential." Just to make sure, Sparda checked. No, she wasn't hungry, just curious.

"Escape?" What was she worried about, here of all places?

Did she remember that Sparda and Dante had failed to protect her, and her them, before? Dante hoped she wouldn't become paranoid about him and Vergil.

"Letting nestlings go hungry to motivate them to learn to deal with their nest's defenses is a teaching tool." It wasn't that the nest was always a safe place: he and his twin had considered it a real treat when prey had been tossed in, for them to hunt and kill, and there really weren't any lifeforms in the demon world without some means of fighting back. They'd still felt mostly safe, since their parents had been watching. The first escape attempts had involved the thrill of disobedience, working together and the realization that they couldn't rely on their parents for everything or stay in the nest forever. The outside was something to be reached, conquered and eaten.

Of course, he wasn't going to think about throwing demons into nests anywhere Vergil might hear it. Vergil needed to be able to believe he had a place safe from demonic attack.

"Should I get her a Rubik's cube?" Dante had invaded enough demon lairs to know their fondness for defenses that were based not just on brute force, but puzzles. Only half of it was to keep out unauthorized personnel. The other half was that devils loved to fight, and they just wanted to make sure that no one was able to reach their private quarters who wasn't going to be entertaining enough to justify the interruption. Devils knew they'd better stay in practice unless they wanted to be eaten.

Devil May Cry's defenses, before Vergil, had been more along the lines of alarms than real wards. Wards were locks, and every lock had to have a key. He'd gotten so used to his offices being trashed that he'd been casual about trashing them himself, like kicking down his own door because it was cool.

It had made him feel like Mom, who had told him and Vergil about her bad luck with offices.

Although he'd acquired a few jinxes of his own along the way. Glass ceilings, motorcycles…

It was one thing to know his old man was a magician. He'd seen the wards and seals. Hell, he'd felt them. He'd never actually been swatted by them, but that was because he wasn't that stupid. Complicated glyphs and payment in red orbs or lives was one thing. Same with combat magic, every demon used some form of power to attack or enhance themselves. For most of them it was wired in, instinct. Like moving your arm.

It was one thing to be a bookworm like Arkham, or shoot energy blasts.

It was another to feel Sparda casually grasp at the world and tug, push, order it to his liking. Dante had heard that before the main seal had gone up, in addition to the seals for the powerful, entrenched permanent portals, some devils had just been able to make a portal whenever they felt like it. Just punch a hole in the fabric of the universe and jam it closed behind them, or just leave it there to gradually heal up. He'd assumed it was another special ability. Teleporting demons were a dime a dozen, even Vergil had learned to do it.

After a moment he realized that this was Sparda's castle and that made it easier. The place was imbued with a kind of life, even if it wasn't quite a demon, and that made it more obedient. It was probably used to being told to hollow out new rooms from the mountain the castle was half on and half _in._

He could feel Eva paying close attention, as well as the downdraft from her wings. She'd pulled back to hover behind his shoulder so she could get a good view. Dante wasn't able to pick up that she'd been wondering if there would be explosions, and Sparda had been too busy concentrating to notice the thought.

"There you are," Sparda told her when it was done. A small room with warm, padded walls that seemed alive. He expected that he'd have to make adjustments: humans had very different ideas of what was appropriate for children, and he didn't know what Eva was thinking like right now. Not exactly. Dante and Vergil had needed something quite different from what he had.

_Again_, she said, cheerfully, buzzing over to him.

"It's a nest, milady," Sparda explained, since she honestly didn't seem to recognize the concept or emotions associated with it.

_Nest? _Eva tilted her head to one side, then the other,

Dante might not have been familiar with what Sparda did, but he knew damn well what 'impending explosion' felt like, and blocked the blast with the old royal guard technique since he didn't want Sparda's rooms to get shredded. Sparda just stood there, not bothering to try to avoid the blast, since it wasn't strong enough to damage him.

She'd concentrated the power admirably.

_Nest, _she said, nodding at the rubble, half rock and half what looked like raw meat.

Nests weren't safe. They couldn't protect anything. They blew up, caught fire: the only safety was in mobility and fighting strength. Oh, wards and traps were better than nothing, but she'd been a devil hunter herself. She knew that the best defenses of devils and sorcerers could be broken through, if someone was determined enough, and Mundus' pawns and worshippers had been quite determined.

She might not be able to consciously access her memories, not quite, but there were some things that she knew in her bones. Things that didn't need to be thought about, fundamental tenets of existence.

She might not remember rock-paper-scissiors, but the house she and Dante had been killed in had burned down around her.

The _only _defense was a good offense.

Bored with so simple a concept, she returned to poking holes in the leather of Dante's coat.


	44. Achilles

_In the old days, Angel Saga was a tightly plotted fic: an objective/plot point in each chapter and a thousand words per chapter to accomplish that objective & get some characterization and foreshadowing in. The last chapter had a little extra wordcount, but I decided to return to the old model so this didn't get turned into a slice of life like so much of my DMC stuff or wander entirely off course like a lot of my Megaman work. _

_Ah, yes. I doubt I'll reach that count before the end of Angel Blessings (the title of the Eva revival substory we're in now), but could everyone please log in or leave an e-mail for their reviews, if it's not too much trouble? To reward the people who have been following this fic this whole time or have just found it and find it interesting despite being such an old project, I'd really like to write a kiriban fic for the 300th reviewer, and it would be sad if I couldn't get in touch with them to find out what they want me to do. A couple kiriban fics have been extra chapters for Angel Saga, as you can see if you hit the chapter navigation list, but it doesn't have to be Angel Saga. If you win, feel free to give me another prompt for DMC, or any fandom I'm familiar with. There are quite a few things that I'd like to write for at some point but haven't had a bunny or gotten around to it, so even if I haven't written for it before, it's worth a shot. And of course I'm militantly liberal when it comes to pairings in this fandom. _

* * *

Vergil was doing kata when he felt it, not because he needed to engrave any of his techniques into muscle memory but simply to be moving. To flex and breathe and strike, to focus on the movement of his body and know that he was in control. Before, he'd wanted to have exact, precise control because that was what he'd demanded of himself. He'd known that he needed to be perfect, better than perfect, to compensate for his tainted blood and the fact he was a mere child by demon standards.

No, a mere infant, a hapless babe in the woods who had been entirely taken in by Arkham and his act. What had made it all the more humiliating was that Arkham wasn't a devil. He didn't have thousands of years of experience, he should have been yet another sorcerer driven mad by grasping after demonic energy, trying to become something greater than they were.

Trying to come what he'd been born as, what he'd intended to grow up to be.

Arkham should have been just as foolish a human as Mary, Lady, had been a foolish girl. And he'd been a foolish boy.

Why was he thinking these things now? Well, that kind of thing was what he'd thought when he was this physical age the first time.

Mundus had wanted him to think that he'd inherited 'tainted' blood on both sides. A mere human's and a traitor's.

Now, he moved like this because the feeling of every flex, every turn, reassured him. His body was moving according to his own will. There was no foreign presence left, no mental scar or reflex to cringe hindering him.

For now. The community service was helping. Like kata. To do it over and over again, experience it over and over again, until he knew how it went. Knew that he could handle it. They were only small fry, but it was something.

His old self wouldn't have accepted that something was better than nothing. That he had to take it one step at a time, because failure was not an option and it was indeed possible for him to fail.

His old self had been an idiot.

It probably meant something that he'd stabilized at this age. It meant that the time he now, in retrospect felt safest wasn't when he was a child, with Eva (bar infancy), or when he was strongest, at the tower. It was a few years before then, when he'd been strong but hadn't made so many of the mistakes that had sent him down the path to Mundus, sent him falling into hell. Jumping.

_Again_? He might have frowned, if he had the right to do something so…

What on earth was Sparda up to today? Large-scale magic and energy fluxes had been background noise in Mundus' domain. Even though he'd immediately recognized the first one as Sparda's power, even in his sleep, it still wasn't something he was used to, not on Earth. There were minor household magics and wards both at Dante's demesne and here, but he'd been in this castle when he was very young, that level didn't disturb him.

He'd felt Dante notice what Sparda was up to, and if it was important and they thought he was worthy of being told they'd tell him. That one had clearly been important, from the energies, and he understood if they didn't want to alarm him.

The one that had happened just now was surprisingly intricate for such a short cast. Well, it probably had to be because Sparda was still far from fully-powered, and finesse could compensate for that just as easily as casting the spell over a longer period and allowing energy to accumulate.

He'd never had any skill for anything more complicated than spilling blood and smashing seal-related things. Not that any of his 'allies' had really wanted him to learn. In fact, if he'd inherited Sparda's talent that would have been far more dangerous than any sword skill.

He'd decided to focus on one thing and one thing alone, to master it perfectly, to make himself into a blade. Learn the sword, kill the Emperor (impossible) and then worry about other lesser things. He'd tried to forge himself into a merciless blade and then Mundus had taken a hammer to it, shattered it. What a joke-

No. He needed to _not _wallow in self-pity. Not reinforce the seeds Mundus had planted, the whispers that he was worthless. He needed to believe that he had strength, but how? When every concept he had of strength was one that had failed? He'd thought he was strong but had truly been just propping himself up by insulting others, saying that he was better than that. Claiming he wouldn't fail because of this, and then he had.

Sparda had failed, despite the fact he was the legendary dark knight, his idea of the strongest demon, and trying to believe in Sparda's power within him, the power he had inherited, had failed.

Eva had surely been as strong as a human could possibly be, and she'd failed. Dante had thought he was insulting her, but it wasn't her fault she was human. Still, she'd been unable to rise above that handicap, and so had… No, that wasn't true at all. Mundus' lies fit so neatly into his old ones…

_He knew that energy. _

A small hidden light in the center of his chest, shielded from detection by the power of Sparda that dwelled in the amulet. He hadn't really been able to tell the difference between Eva's aura and Trish's because to a young demon the aura of their guardian surrounded them, colored the world. He hadn't known what was her and what was simply humanity, the human world, the world of light.

She'd been the best of humanity. She'd tried so hard to keep him safe. She'd _been there _,she'd seen him suffer, and she'd kept him from killing Dante.

Normally, his displacement technique was limited to line of sight, but he _knew _what he was aiming for and his survival instincts hadn't cared if he ended up buried in a wall, apparently.

At some point in his shocked silence, he'd found himself here, with the amulet around his neck again/a small gold nestling clinging to his chest/his mother holding him/a power combing through his mind and emotions and _roaring_.

When he felt that.

That was when he stopped thinking, mind sliding gratefully into the dark.


	45. Selene

_Angel Blessings 5/7, still dedicated to Djibriel._

_Yes, I am aware it's only Wednesday. I am posting early this week to let people know that I have a fic (or several fics, depending on the amount of the final bid and the bonus wordcount) up for auction on the lj group Help_Japan. If you want a direct link, go to my profile: the link where it says homepage will take you to my livejournal, where the top public post should link to the comment with my offer. I'd recommend checking out the rest of the post, though, because there are some good authors on there, and apparently so many authors are participating that the Help_Japan group added another post for them to make offers on. There are also posts offering art, physical goods, etc. etc. _

* * *

One minute, Eva had been happily turning Dante's red leather coat into a pincushion (maybe she liked it because she'd once worn red leather coats, maybe she liked it because red leather coats were just awesome in general), the next Dante got that 'something's about to appear' feeling that he'd long since learned to hide so that they wouldn't see him jump or know that he knew they were about to try to stab him in the back.

Seriously, they should know that it had been tried before and hadn't worked then, either. It was hard to be scared when it was so pathetic, or startled when he was really kind of bored of it, to be honest. Hadn't demons been killing each other a lot longer than humans had? Wouldn't everybody have gotten used to attacks like that, so devils would have told their demons not to try it, it never worked?

Well, Mundus' forces had been there to attack humans, too, and it would work on humans. They probably found it hilarious that humans would fall for such a cliché move. And then there was the saying that the best swordsman didn't fear the second-best, he feared the worst, because he didn't know what the idiot would do. Maybe it was a good tactic to try the simple, obvious, and easy to counter against ancient devils used to dealing with enemies that were also thinking twelve steps ahead.

It would explain why the best strategy, Dante had found, was generally just to get in there and start swinging.

Next thing, there was a gold and silver-blue tangled ball on the floor, and his mind randomly tossed up that those colors belonged together for some reason and he couldn't think how. Christmas was red and green, Halloween was orange and black: what was gold and blue?

Gold and blue and red. And purple.

Orbs.

And his family.

Vergil had _shrunk_? More?

There were little crying sounds coming from the ball, and from the feelings the way the ball was rolled around was supposed to be in a comforting way, hugging the baby and petting and nuzzling and _fuck that_.

Dante reflexively threw up Royal Guard. He hadn't really used it in years: it was better to dodge than be hit and he didn't need to redirect the power of his enemies when he had plenty of his own. Plus, royal guard kind of ruined the intimidation factor. Using a shield technique implied that he needed one. He could block with devil arms if he needed to block.

He'd only blocked to save Sparda's stuff before because Mom coming back meant it was now Sparda-and-Mom's stuff. His father could look after his own stuff, it wasn't Dante's problem if it broke, and it wasn't like Dante would have blocked a blast in his own place.

Nope, their stuff getting broken was one thing. When they broke something around _Mom, _though…

Normally, Dante really liked getting people angry at him. It was fun, and with humans it showed him what they were made of and with devils it was part of the fun _and _a free snack. The desire to kill didn't phase him: yeah, he'd busted their shit up? What were they going to do about it? Get their asses kicked, that was what.

Nothing had made him want to cringe back in years.

Not since he was a nearly-helpless little kid, faced with demon assassins, or the Wrath of Mom.

And Mom was _pissed_.

Children misbehaved partly to test their parents, to see if their parents really knew how to manage stuff and were good models. Demons and devils constantly tested all those around them for strength. The strong ruled, the weak served or died.

Eva had been a human, dealing with two sons of Sparda. She had not kept order in the house, kept Dante from ordering her to order him pizza all the time and Vergil from skipping out on learning to shoot by being wishy-washy. She had not kept them from going to fight demons or cops for fun by appealing to their good sense.

She had not kept them alive by being nice. She had kept them alive by putting the fear of god into them.

A weak human shouldn't have been able to intimidate them. A weak human should have been _food_. A weak human should not have tapped ancient nestling instincts that made Dante want to cower and say that he was sorry he was weak and stupid and please don't cull him, please?

They had truly believed, when Mom got like this, that if they did something stupid and put themselves in danger, then if the demons didn't kill them, _she would_. That if they got on her last nerve _one more time_, she would eat them in one bite with screaming human souls on top.

If Eva hadn't been a hunter, if she hadn't known how demons thought, if she hadn't killed plenty of them she would never have been able to pull it off. She would never have been able to impress Dante, who was well on his way to becoming a legend to rival Sparda (among those who knew), enough to make him model himself on someone with a fraction of his power.

Because Eva hadn't had power. She'd had knowledge they didn't have, used to shock and awe and terrify, she'd had the guts to face down demons (even if, as a hunter, she'd never faced anything as powerful as them, she'd still been there, done that, and was not impressed when they rawred at her), and they'd seen her fight.

Anything that fucked with her kids was fucking dead, and that had _better _not include them.

Eva had gotten out of everything she could out of everything she had, but she really hadn't had the power. She hadn't been a son of Sparda. When all her tricks were used up, when the battle dragged on too long, she hadn't been able to keep it up forever.

Vergil had been right. She'd died because she was human. In the end, there was just that massive power differential. Guns only kept physical strength from mattering until a soldier ran out of bullets.

She'd loved them, but she'd been only human.

And now she wasn't.

It was Sparda's power that had created the template for her devil form.

She'd done all that as a human, and now she had the same power Dante had to play around with (or she would, in a few years, but Eva was very, very good at bluffing).

Golden wings stretched out. Legs lengthened and spikes grew. A nestling's somewhat soft, still-growing carapace was replaced by an adult's jagged armor, more solid than any mere rock.

Her eyes glowed, but there was no human intelligence there, either incapable of reason or _long _past the point of it. Only white soon overwhelmed by red and absolute certainty.

Something had hurt her baby (nestling).

Something was going to die screaming.


	46. Clytemnestra

_Next chapter is the last chapter of this section of the fic. I'll have more info on when the next section will be starting then, hopefully. I hope you're enjoying it so far?_

* * *

If Dante hadn't known how his life worked, he might have done something stupid like ask Sparda if the fact Eva had transformed into an adult-sized devil was a good sign. After all, if she'd turned into an adult human then her brain should have been back on.

Nope: he knew too much about how demons worked for that. He knew devil trigger when he saw it.

He also knew Mom too well for that. He knew 'on the warpath' when he saw it.

Part of him did go, 'Oh crap, what did I do that she might have found out about?' but he was good at not letting reflexes affect his cool. This wasn't, 'Dante, what in hell were you thinking, leaving my side in a crowd and shooting holes in a parade dragon with someone inside,' which merited immediate apologies, puppy-dog eyes and bracing himself for punishment. This was, 'excuse me boys, some demon just decided that today was a good day for it to die,' which merited finding someplace far enough away she wouldn't scold them later but close enough to watch and cheer from.

It was kind of heartwarming, or pleasantly nostaligic. Really took him back.

Still, though, she'd just been brought back, devil trigger ran out and Mundus wasn't here. He stayed ready to use the royal guard technique because he knew that _he _was furious enough about what had happened to Vergil to want to smash things, and for her right now, when she wasn't thinking and didn't know her own strength, that was likely to include a few walls. Or it was possible she might go looking for Mundus, but Sparda had surely made damn sure that there were no portals nearby, so she'd end up flying in some direction until she turned little again. Sparda would probably be more than happy to carry her home, if that happened.

The idea that she would attack him didn't cross his mind, and she certainly wasn't attacking Vergil, instead crouching over him protectively. Dante wondered what it meant that Vergil had turned into a little devil like Sparda and Eva had been when they woke up, instead of his usual form. It might give him a clue to get control of the shapeshifting. It was also kind of cute, in that devilish way. Vergil certainly wasn't scared, either, clinging to a leg happily.

Between the two of them, practically anyone would have pegged Sparda for the deeper thinker, not to mention that he was the one who knew this sort of thing. And this was his wife, surely he would have more to say about her condition and what might happen and so on.

Actually, under the circumstances, the best way to describe his thought process would be visually, with a lot of little hearts floating up above his head, and a couple more in his eyes.

Underworld culture idolized strength, prized it above all. Obviously, a strong mate had strong children. There were devil breeds evolved to take advantage of those instincts and beguile others, pretend to be more desirable than they were: the incubi. Because of this, most devil breeds had evolved to keep their sex drives under lock and key, as hard for another devil to activate without their permission and use to manipulate them as possible.

Sparda hadn't found it difficult at all to resist Nevan, and if it weren't for his ancestry Dante and Vergil wouldn't have had a snowball's chance in hell of doing the same. That was one of the things that attracted Nevan to them: a devil capable of resisting an incubus was obviously stronger than they were.

Eva, however, was his beloved and trusted mate, meaning that it was safe to take the brakes off.

To be honest, and Sparda and Eva had been honest with each other about it, he hadn't loved her for her body. Physically, humans were squishy, fragile, and fairly weak by underworld standards. In fact, while a Nobody would have been marginally less unappealing, Sparda's tastes ran to members of his own subspecies, in that regard.

Conversely, while Eva found Sparda's human form quite hot, his demon form was a big spiky/scaly bug and trying to give him a hug, must less additional, more vigorous physical contact, would have cut her arms open, on top of bruises from the hard carapace.

Sparda had loved her for her fire, the strength of her inner self, and mutual effort and respect had been enough to build a relationship despite species barriers. And his shapeshifting ability.

He had found her inner self attractive enough to overcome her outward appearance, but that didn't mean he wasn't a red-ichored devil.

Now that her outer self finally matched her inner self, to his eyes?

Not to mention that demons and devils tended to like fighting. A lot. It was a display of strength, of power and the reasons mates had chosen each other in the first place.

She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, certainly the most alluring, and if she hadn't been childlike, still recovering and making a threat display instead of a mating display it would have been impossible to resist pouncing. Obviously it would take a few centuries before she grew strong enough that he could fight her without holding back (or perhaps not, given Dante and Vergil), but if he was capable of holding back while sparring with her in a human body they could certainly explore this new aspect of their relationship.

She would need practice fighting like a devil, after all.

While Sparda was certainly paying close attention to certain aspects of the current situation, his thoughts were more on his beloved and the future ahead of them than anything else.

Which is why the blast took him by surprise.

Devil trigger was a rush of demon power, of rage and emotional energy, and had only made Eva more confused. She knew that Vergil was the hurt nestling and she could sense that Dante was his twin.

By process of elimination, that meant the other powerful devil present was the one who had hurt him.

So she went about the process of eliminating him.


	47. Persephone

_This is the last chapter of _Angel Blessings _and, I'm sorry to say, the last chapter of the fic._

_I swore to never leave a fic unfinished, but since I at least wrapped up the current subsection, I'm going to count that oath kept. I've just really lost my enthusiasm for _Devil May Cry,_ the way I did _Yu-gi-oh _despite the fact I had a really popular fic there. I did a poll awhile ago and asked if people wanted me to get writing and just get the story finished or were willing to wait for a proper grand finale: I was really happy that people were willing to wait, but I'm going to have to apologize to those people. If you want to know more, read the A/N at the end of the chapter. _

* * *

After their mom tackled Sparda through a wall, Dante knelt down next to Vergil. "You ok?" Vergil didn't look exactly like Sparda and Eva. More like halfway in between that form and his first devil trigger, the one he'd used at Temen ni Gru.

Dante wondered what he would look like as a nestling, but given that he'd probably only find out if something bad happened and depowered him, he was fine with not knowing. Also, he bet Trish and Nevan would tease him about it.

Ignoring him, Vergil's wings spread and he determinedly took to the air, only a little wobbly, and started floating in the direction their parents had gone. Dante snagged him easily. "Whoa there, let's leave them alone, okay?" The thumps and crashes coming from that direction could have meant they were just kissing and making up. Dante had never minded a little affectionate roughhousing. While it had been mean of Lady to shoot him in the head, _actually trying to kill him_ (Lady hadn't known from gold orbs, back then, and hunters didn't inflict fatal wounds for kicks even on other hunters, since a single gold orb literally meant the difference between life and death), just for helping her, fighting her that other time had been incredibly hot. He'd been more than a little in love with her, after that. Her spirit, her determination: apparently it was normal for humans to be attracted to people like their parent of the opposite gender. Although not as much like them as Trish was, that would be kind of creepy.

Vergil tried to kick free.

"What, you want to watch them making ou-" Dante began to reply when a roar shook the building. That was not a friendly competition roar. That was a murderous half-hiss, a, 'get back here so I can kill you!'

Oookay… "Way to go Mom." Up until Temen ni Gru, Dante had hated Sparda. It wasn't just resentment, he had a lot of reasons to resent being a half-demon, being a target and so on, but the thing that made him hate his father was that if he was so great, where was he?

How could he, how _dare _he, abandon them? Abandon his wife? He'd saved the world, beaten Mundus and separated two worlds. He'd lived for two thousand years, so how could he have died now, when they needed him? After Eva had died and he'd been out in the real world for awhile, Dante had begun to wonder if he'd just skipped out on them. It happened, when guys didn't want to deal with settling down and raising kids.

That would have been unforgiveable. No, the only good excuse for not returning to them would have been death. Permanent death, because existing in a devil arm was still existing. He guessed he could accept that Sparda's own seal had sealed in his devil arm, drained the weakened devil of too much power for him to pull himself together, wake up, and get back home, but if either of _them_ had made her worry like that, Mom would have killed them. Like she was trying to kill Sparda.

Dante had walked in on her once, lying in bed, just crying, and he couldn't stand seeing her like that. Because of _him_, his damn father.

So Sparda totally deserved to get the crap beaten out of him for abandoning them, and now that he was grown up Dante would have felt like a jerk for doing something like that, since Sparda hadn't meant to. He hated having to be mature.

Mom was just awesome, he reflected, as Vergil stopped trying to get free and instead sank his teeth into Dante's bicep. _I'm hungry. Feed me_.

"What happened to you, anyway?"

Vergil just clacked his wings, fiendishly pleased with himself.

"Oh, so _that's _how she devil triggered." Vergil must have given her a lot of his own power. They could do that? "So _that's _how you… bastard." Dante should have been drained after fighting Vergil on top of Temen ni Gru. He'd put it down to emotional turmoil: he'd just seen his brother again and his brother had just gutted him, but normally when something like that happened back then he'd shut down. Stopped trying to feel anything, because that way lay madness and nightmares. He shouldn't have been filled with a roiling, chaotic power that he hadn't been able to control. He saw now, in retrospect, that he hadn't been able to because it wasn't _his_. Mostly, he tried not to think about the aftermath of that fight, because it had been embarrassing to moan to the heavens like some injured weakling and normally he never devil triggered by accident. He had too much control for _that_. "You were trying to force me to change, weren't you? That was why you stabbed me like that with Yamato." Channeling power through Vergil's own devil arm directly into Dante's core. "Bastard," Dante said, almost admiringly. Yeah, Vergil had been a real bastard back then. "Why you'd do it now, though?"

Vergil's happiness drained away as Dante carried him towards the remaining orb stash. _Weak. Human. No. _It was wrong of him to think that.

"You didn't want her to be weak, in case anything happened again?" Dante asked. "Come on, with all of us here?" Except Sparda had disappeared before and they'd failed to protect her before.

The crashes and now explosions in the background were making Dante's inner child jump up and down, cheering for Mom to kick his ass.

Realistically, he doubted she'd actually be able to kill him, but if she could that would be awesome and they had orbs.

_I thought she died because she was human_. Vergil kept working to pull himself together instead of falling into the nestling mentality Eva had exhibited. _And that you needed to accept and use that power if you were going to have any chance of surviving Mundus_. That if Eva had a devil's power, if he could make Dante change, they would have survived. They would have been able to fight off the attack. _I saw your body, that day. Just like hers, and then I found you, and not her._ If a child had survived and not the adult, devil blood could be the only reason. Mother had been stronger than them, back then. She'd known so much more.

He'd thought that if he learned everything, attained true strength, then he could protect.

How had he been such a fool?

"It's called being a teenager, Vergil_. _It wasn't just us, remember Lady?" They'd all been idiots, back then.

* * *

_April Fools!_

_Nope, the fic is not over._

_Not only will I still be doing the seventh section, _Angel War_, it looks like there will be an eighth section, _Angel Duel, _although that depends on how much of an ensemble piece I want to make this. While I originally did want Trish, Eva, etc. to play roles, I kind of want to show the Order as what they would have been without demonic power driving them crazy like Arkham, then there's that cute couple from the anime and if I'm giving them screen time I need to expand on Lucia & Matier, to be fair. Then there's Beryl, and a war really should include the human demon hunters, shouldn't it? There's a bit more to this than a precision strike against Mundus._

_What do you guys think? Should I go back to focusing on Vergil now that the Eva & Sparda recovery arcs are over, or do you want more screentime for Lady and so on? Keep in mind, though, that since Dante got Yamato instead of the Order, there's no Nero in this universe. Nero was just an emanation of Vergil's soul/avatar of his inner struggle and attempt to choose how to live the rest of his life (or that's the explanation that makes the most sense without derailing Vergil's character a second time), and Vergil's got it together more in this universe._

Angel War _should be starting week after next. Next week I'll be doing the kiriban chapter/fic. _


	48. Kiriban: Hug

_This chapter of _Angel Saga_ is courtesy of the 300__th__ reviewer, Cynder Vampire, who requested Vergil & Eva fluff. If the fic ever gets up to four hundred, there would of course be another kiriban because I love reviewers. It does do a lot to cheer up a poor sick girl to find that people actually like the product of all her hard work. _

_Judging from the reviews, there's people that want to see the rest of the awesome DMC cast & people that want the focus of the fic brought back to Vergil. _

_Since I'm already splitting Angel War, which was going to be the seventh and final section, into Angel War & Angel Duel anyway, I've decided to split the difference and have Angel War be the 'Devil May Cry Unlimited' subsection while Duel focuses on Vergil, the family, and the final boss rush. Of course, that involves another rewrite of the new ending._

_I'm not certain if I referenced the novels before in Angel Saga, but I _should _have, so I am. Dante's just not holding it against him after everything he went through._

* * *

After Eva's devil trigger had worn off, Sparda had carried her small, exhausted yet clearly pleased with herself form to where the orbs were kept. They'd expected him to stay to make sure she fed properly and tell them how proud he was of her first fight as a devil, but Sparda had looked unusually worried and asked them to look after her before saying something about checking the castle's structural supports and displacing (Eva would have grabbed him if he'd tried to just walk away).

Dante might have said something about the state of his clothing if Mom hadn't been present and Vergil hadn't been underage. Not that Dante had been a virgin at that age, or that Mom seemed to understand human speech at the moment, but better safe than sorry. Not to mention that joking about stuff like that was far less appealing when these were his _parents_.

So he'd rubbed her head as she started digging in to the orbs with small, wicked teeth, and watched her eat, wings clacking happily. She might have lost track of what she was doing (trying to shred Sparda) when she'd dropped out of devil trigger, but she still seemed aware that she'd been in a fight and done well.

Vergil managed to consume enough power to become human-looking again long before Eva was full, which was a good thing because not long after that Dante got a call from Trish and had to leave.

After Dante left, Vergil managed to coax Eva into sitting on his lap with a white orb. He knew he probably could have just wanted her to come and she would have, but he still lacked confidence.

By looking down on humanity, he'd disgraced her memory, and if she'd been watching all along then she knew everything. Everything Mundus had done to him. Everything _he _had done.

He didn't deserve the way she'd jumped to his defense. Maybe he'd wanted to see her do that one last time. Fell loved while she still loved him.

Before she remembered Temen ni Gru. No, he'd done far worse than that, hadn't he? Before she remembered Nell, the woman he'd calmly set up to burn to death, if she cared about Dante so much. Before she remembered all the people he'd slaughtered, especially Dante's first partner, and what the demons he'd allied with had used the man's daughter for.

To be a perfect devil he'd forsaken human compassion, the idea that there was something _wrong _about killing the weak. He'd wanted to show Dante that without strength, he could not protect anything.

Or that had been what he'd told himself, hadn't it?

By the laws of the Underworld, the code of honor he'd embraced, he hadn't done anything wrong. By the code of honor Sparda had forsaken, there had been nothing wrong about what Mundus had done to him.

The underworld would probably self-destruct if they tried to follow human codes, but he was a human as well as a devil, and Mother had been a human. She'd tried to raise him right, she'd trusted that he'd grow up into a good man and he'd failed her.

He felt delicate little claws catching on his sleeves and wondered if they'd ever rip though his flesh. And not just in the course of a spar. He doubted she'd train with him, surely she'd be so angry she'd worry about ripping head off. Unless she decided she wanted to rip his head off.

Yelling at him would be better than not speaking to him. Maybe if she punished him enough, she'd forgive him.

Mundus hadn't, but then he wasn't the one Mundus had been angry at.

He hoped she'd hate him. It was better if she thought he deserved what Mundus had done, if she washed her hands of him, because otherwise she would have been suffering along with him, all this time. She might blame herself for not being able to save him, or not raising him well enough to keep him from being so damn stupid in the first place.

Vergil mentally curled in on himself a little more when Eva poked at his chest, wanting to know why the nestling was such a sad nestling. Being ignored just made her poke again, which made him hunch in a bit physically as well.

Like this, her arms could barely span his chest. That wouldn't do at all, she thought, stretching one set of wings out, then the other, before taking flight.

Vergil didn't move, eyes open but sightless until something fell into his lap. He blinked and focused his eyes to see a gold orb. As he stared at it, another one fell down, clacking against it, and he looked up to see Eva flying back to the cupboard she'd found (smelled) them in, carefully wrapping her arms around another one and flying back with it.

A distracted nestling wasn't a sad nestling, so that was better, she decided as she sat next to him. The nestling's shoulders were too thin to sit on, not like dearest or the other nestling. She poked his arm. _Feed up, get bigger,_ she told the nestling, before following her own advice. Nestlings needed good examples.

Gold orbs were far more concentrated power, but they were rare and expensive. Vergil would have gotten up to put the two of them away if he hadn't sensed a familiar, 'what do you think you're doing?' when he shifted his weight, preparing to get up.

Still, he'd only taken a couple of bites when she finished hers and stretched again, then flew up and kept stretching.

Yes, she thought as her arms wrapped around her son from behind and she pulled him back against her chest, tucking his head under her chin, hugging worked so much better with human arms. "Come on, eat up. You want to get big and strong like your father, don't you?" Why did Vergil have to be such a picky eater? Dante might plead for his favorites, but he'd devour just about anything happily.

"…Mom…" His voice cracked. She remembered hearing his voice change, although that was after she died, of course. He'd hated it, it had made him seem immature. There were devils that took the shape of children, so appearing as a dignified child was one thing. His voice changing pitch in the middle of sentences was another. "Mom!" he cried, turning around and clinging to her.

She rubbed his back. "It's alright, Vergil. I'm here now," she said, even though she'd been there as Mundus tortured him and it hadn't made any difference. It was one of those things parents said. "You're going to be alright," she said, because that was another thing, and it made him cry harder.

She shifted a little, trying to get comfortable on the pile of orbs that had rolled out onto the floor. She knew she was going to be here awhile.

She didn't begrudge it at all.

It had been too long since she'd been able to hold them.


	49. Intermission: Understanding

_Still dedicated to Djibriel, who did an ungodly amount of beautiful fanart for me. Most of which got lost in several sequential computers dying, but ah well._

_In any case, here's the first chapter of Angel War, the seventh and second-to-last section. I just hope it's on time. After Angel War comes Angel Duel, and after Angel Duel I have no idea when I'll be getting around to writing for DMC again, even though all this made the Sparda's rebellion fic muses wake up. I have _way _too many ongoing projects. Which I need to stop stressing out about. _

* * *

"So, what's with the statue?" Dante asked, leaning against the wall. Checking the supports? Yeah, right. Vergil didn't know people well enough to pick up that Sparda was hiding something, but Dante had.

"Your ability to hide your aura is impressive," Sparda complimented Dante. The admission that he'd been surprised was the only evidence of it, not that Dante had expected to make him jump. Still, he would have thought that Sparda would at least turn around to make sure it was him, perhaps disbelieving that Dante really was _that _good. "For one so young," Sparda added, and Dante remembered the account of the war Sparda had written down & their mother had read to them. Sparda might have been an honorable dark knight, but devils didn't see anything dishonorable about sneaking around. Sparda had gotten though powerful wards and been disguised as a participant in war meetings with powerful sorcerers and partbloods present.

Was the trick that Dante thought he'd had because he'd spent all that time convinced he was human just something he'd inherited from Sparda? Even Phantom, one of Mundus' officers, hadn't realized he was anything more than an ordinary hunter until it was too late. Hadn't even realized he was a partblood until he devil triggered.

Walking up next to Sparda, Dante saw that he was smiling slightly. Had he known Dante was there all along or was he just appreciating Dante's style?

It was only a slight smile, however. Sparda had shields up, which was why Dante still hadn't dropped the act and let his aura show his real power, and he was looking at the statue with the air of someone sizing up a threat.

Oh? "He looks a lot like you," Dante realized. He'd never really thought about Sparda's family, but he must have had one, hadn't he? Even if he had sprung full-formed from someone's brow or something mythical like that. Now that he thought about it, wouldn't Sparda have had a twin? "You sealed away your twin?"

Because this close, inside the four ornamented pillars around the statue, he could feel that it was somewhere between alive and a devil arm.

"Incorrect on both counts," was Sparda's response, still only paying a sliver of attention to Dante.

"He's not your twin, and you didn't seal him away?"

"I may." Sparda grimaced, beginning to walk around the statue.

Hmm? "Who is he?"

"Look around you."

A puzzle instead of an answer? Well, devils were inclined towards puzzles. Dante examined the statue. Looked vaguely liked Sparda, vaguely Roman clothes but a demonic aura, wielding a trident and a net, one glowing a deep blue and the other red: water and fire? Devil arms, Dante realized, and thought that something was about to come to him until he realized that it was just a bit about gladiators. If they fought with a trident and a net they were called a retarius, or something like that.

Still, Sparda had said 'around,' not at the statue, so Dante did. The walls had all sorts of complicated glyphs, like the ones that had controlled Nightmare: was this the core of the castle? Then he looked down. The foot of the walls had been lined with red orbs: no. They weren't set into the wall, they were under the wall. Holding it up. "Who builds a castle on a foundation of demon blood?" Dante asked, and knew.

"He's been left out of most tellings of the legend for a thousand years now. The hunters hate him, of course. One the one hand, he's proof that a human can attain power equal to a devil. On the other, if he hadn't proved it was possible? Countless people, hunters and sorcerers alike, have tried and failed. Good men gone mad or evil men sacrificing innocent humans and angering neutral devils in a useless quest for power."

Arkham had thought that it was possible to steal a devil's power, for a human to possess a power equal to Sparda's, because, once upon a time, someone had done it. Arius had pissed off the Despair Embodied enough it was willing to attack its worshippers if Dante hadn't beaten it first trying to do what this man had. "Virgilius the Sorcerer." The Warder of Rome. The Prince of Babylon. The human who had eventually become the leader of the sorcerers, partbloods, the armies trying to free the human world from Mundus.

"If he hadn't believed me when I said that I had seen the error of my ways, helped design the seal and found Maria, none of us would be here." Sparda kept pacing, watching the statue like a hawk. "Eventually, he sealed himself away to await the day the seal would break and left me his castle. To you, to this world that has forgotten so much, I am a hero. Back then, I was a monster. He knew the atrocities I committed while I was still loyal to Mundus, and he still took the risk of trusting me. And I am going to have to betray his trust."

Dante hadn't liked his father for as long as he could remember. From a child's point of view he'd betrayed them, by disappearing. By failing to be invincible. Dante was used to hearing devils condemn Sparda as a terrible traitor, and when he was younger he would have smiled and agreed with them, darkly glad that he wasn't the only one who didn't think he was all that great, when Eva had refused to blame him, the world idolized him, and Sparda had become the core of Vergil's obsession with demonic power.

Still, the core of Sparda had always been his mother's stories, the 'hero that fought for justice.' Because that was what he was from a human perspective, and Dante had insisted that he was human.

He'd always seen him from the human perspective, even though he was also a devil. And, from that perspective, Sparda was a _traitor_.

The carefully constructed rules about who could be trusted when were all that kept the underworld from collapsing into chaos. Without them, devil arms would have to be smashed. No one could trust anyone else. To save the human world, Sparda had attacked the foundation of his own, because if even such an 'honorable' knight, so trusted, could do something like that? Something so reprehensible it bordered on _obscene_?

"If his spells detect that the war has begun again," the way Sparda fighting a devil so close might have set them off, "he will wake up. He would help defeat Mundus, of course. And then he would kill Eva. And all of you." Sparda turned to Dante. "I killed his wife, you see, and he will not rest until he has vengeance for that, against me and against Mundus, who gave the order."

Dante remembered Mundus, Beowulf, Bolverk: all the devils that hated Sparda, that had carried that grudge for two thousand years. No human could contain a devil's power without starting to think like a devil, even a little.

"He would kill all of you, or worse," Sparda said, and there was an air of finality to it.

After all, from a devil's perspective, and Sparda was a devil, he had no honor left to lose.

* * *

_To attempt to give you a short version in this 'DVD Commentary,' when I came up with the _Angel Saga _project I also had a planned Mundus' war fic. In that fic, I planned to use a fairy-tale Roman sorcerer named Virgilius that I'd read about years ago as a main character, because the stories about him just fit so well. Stole power from a devil, invasion of Rome, etc. (Not to mention that I'd obviously prefer using a crossover character to making up an OC capable of fighting against Sparda.) I even did a teaser fic in the form of Et in Terra Pax Hominibus. Unfortunately, I got sick and that project never got started, and I was going to use him to close a plothole in the entire seal setup that appeared in 3 (and has been made worse by 4), so Sparda could fight at full power. _

_The trouble is that the fairy tales are obscure, Et in Terra Pax was after years of character development that was supposed to take place in tandem with and as a foil for Sparda's, and if I bring him into _Angel Saga_ now, I'd have to try to sum up something novella-length in its own right and keep Virgilius, who was an _epic _troll as well as vengeance-prone, from stealing the damn show by terrifying the hell out of Vergil (who is still recovering and quite fragile) & triggering his issues (calling him a traitor etc.), which he would do in order to torment Sparda. I can't waste chapters on the equivalent of recap, and when I can't _show _why he's badass, just saying that he's dangerous enough Sparda would let him get away with doing that to Vergil (at least until Mundus is dealt with, at which point all bets are off) would feel like Shilling the Wesley/Gary Stu. _

_So explaining what the blank is going on with the guy in this fic just won't work, even if this will be a Missed Moment of Awesome/They Wasted A Perfectly Good Plot if I ever do get around to doing the prequel, so I at least had to establish why Virgilius wasn't going to be around during the second war against Mundus in this fic. I'm going to have to use Sanctus, Matier and a few of the devil arms for what I was going to use him for. _

_Still, doing it this way helps establish Sparda's character, I think. He's mostly been mild-mannered and apologetic in this fic, because he screwed up and he doesn't want to scare/provoke the humans, but he's still a ruthless devil that makes Vergil in the first novel (forget the third game) look like a total poser. When it's his word to an ally vs. the safety of his family, you'd have to be an idiot to trust someone who's famous for treason. _

_Of course, Sparda is going to seal him in instead of try to destroy the statue because obviously it's booby trapped in case someone tried that. He wasn't that stupid. Also, it's kind of a hoist by his own petard for him to get sealed away after sealing _himself _away..._


End file.
